Diary of a Poker Journeyman

Best shirt ever

2009-07-13T19:51:53Z

Hello, friends. As the complete lack of entries in this blog might indicate, I haven't really been playing a lot of poker lately. Just had to chime in this once, though, with a link to a Wicked Chops entry which shows what I think is the greatest poker shirt of all time. The humor in this might be lost on my online-only brethren, but trust me...to a B&M player, this is funny as hell.

WRGPT18 - Out

2009-01-23T21:20:06Z

Well, I'm out of this year's WRGPT. AKs vs. KK. Ah, well. 'Twas a good run.

2008 wrapup; 2009 beginning with a whimper

2009-01-08T07:18:04Z

Hello, and a belated Happy New Year to y'all. I've been off the radar for a little while, largely due to not playing much, but also slightly due to just plain laziness. For those keeping score, when last we left off I'd been laid off from the day job and so had decided to take a break from poker for a while as well as my bankroll could suddenly be put to more important and immediate use. Since that last writing (about two months ago), I've been re-hired at the same job but at a somewhat lower capacity than previously. Things at work started off slow and have lately gradually been picking up, so in my time in limbo I managed to blow through a lot of bankroll for living expenses. I'm basically starting off 2009 from scratch, or at least resolved to act like it. I'm unsure as of this moment just how much poker I'll be able to play in the near future. The hope is, of course, that the answer will be "plenty," but only time will tell. Time to build up the old bankroll again.

Since the layoff, what time I have spent at the tables has basically been in the low-stakes limit arena. It's been an interesting time, going back to limit. I think it did take me a little while to get adjusted, but...once I got back into the groove it was...well, it was just like old times. Comforting, in a way. Of course, I get run down like crazy, but, hey...it's limit. Whaddaya gonna do.

I managed to squeeze in enough hours in November and December that I played in the freeroll tourney offered by the Trop. Yeah, I lasted about a whole hour in that debacle. Nothing really exciting went down. I basically just made a really ill-timed steal, and that was all she wrote. Everything else has been low-stakes limit, basically hanging around the 2/4 and 4/8 levels. The only exception in recent memory was when a few pals came to town and I joined them in a cheapo NLHE tournament. Did so-so in that one; made it to about the top third before busting out. And at least the bustout was strategically sound: got my money in good and all that. (All-in pre-flop with pocket nines against KQ suited. I flop a set, he flops a straight. Doh!)

Going back to limit's not so bad. Also I guess I'm sticking with the Trop as my primary place. When they first got a bad beat jackpot going over there I was thinking about setting up shop somewhere else, but pretty much forgot about it when I switched over to no-limit. Now that I'm back to limit, though...in the meantime, every place else in A.C. has set up a BBJ, so...might as well stay at the Trop.

One big side effect of going back to limit, at least as far as this blog is concerned, is that I feel like nothing really exciting happens any more. :) I have good days, I have bad days...but I feel like the hands are all ho-hum. I mean, that's only natural; I never have to make decisions for my whole stack any more. So I've gone back to being a grinder, basically, which probably means I see nothing really exciting coming up for the blog in the near future. :) Still...looking forward to working the bankroll back up to a decent level and trying my hand at no-limit once again.

Oh, and a couple asides. One, I didn't sign up for the WBCOOP this year, a little since my free time has become so unpredictable lately (as part of the re-hire at work is a wacky, varying schedule), but mostly because my Internet connection completely sucks and I don't do any online poker any more. Two, I am, amazingly, still in the WRGPT this year, though it's still slow and difficult going, as always. I've already pretty much given up hope on this one, but it's okay -- no matter what else happens, I did manage to double up with Presto, so...the rest is gravy. :)

And...I think that's about it. If anything big changes in my situation, I'll be sure and post about it, but for now just consider me a low-stakes limit grinder who doesn't even play that much, so just assume that I have nothing fun to talk about. Until more exciting times, then, everybody. Peace!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled broadcast...

2008-11-11T04:04:36Z

My life, reflected in established poker blogs: I got caught in this. For those not clicking, I got laid off from work. As such, I'm doing some laying off of my own by laying off the poker for a little while. If I play at all in the foreseeable future, I'll probably go back to low-stakes limit hold 'em. I probably wouldn't even bother at all, frankly, were it not for the fact that if I log a bunch of hours this month I can enter a freeroll in like mid-December, so if I can log hours with low variance, so much the better for me for the time being. :) In any case, though, for the moment, I'm going to be taking a little break.

Double-down

2008-11-04T21:48:19Z

I've got two sessions to recap, but both will be brief.

Saturday (11/1) - To be honest, I remember very little from this session. It was of significant length, but I took no notes and by the end was basically braindead, so I've got nothing specific to go over. I do know that I took a really early dive and spent the whole session trying to dig out of a hole. Toward the very end of the night, as tables were breaking and new players were filing in (who all had very short stacks), I made up a lot of lost ground, but overall, I booked a loss for the night. Definitely not as bad as it could have been, though. I think this was another one of those nights where I end up down where I was never really up. It's weird how that works out. I wish had more specifics from this session, but...well, I don't. :)

Monday (11/3) - This was last night, and it was definitely my worst session in recent memory. It got off to a terrible start, and sadly it didn't get much better. I hit a few losses really early on, and I definitely dropped a buy-in within the first hour. The very sad ending to this phase of things was my calling off my stack with AQ with an ace on the flop vs. opponents AK. Rookie shit right there, I feel, but...in my own defense, I did at least sit and think about it for a while. :) For pretty much the first half, though, things just overall didn't go right. Like, ever. It is entirely likely that I was just pure and simple getting outplayed. For sure I was more the victim than the perpetrator of aggression. Would bluff, and someone would jam. I would bet a mediocre hand, and someone would jam. It got pretty ridiculous after a while.

Something else that sticks in my mind about this particular table lineup was that there was a lot of that bizarre pre-flop limp-calling mania afoot. I know I used to run into that all the time, but I feel like it's been a while since I've seen that. But it's like...five people limp, late position makes a significant raise, every limper calls. Usually I don't mind situations like that, since it's also often the case that with that kind of pre-flop play, I can often take down a nice pot post-flop with just a c-bet, if I was the pre-flop raiser. Which I did do, by the way, at this table. Complicating factors, though, was that it was often a two-barrel operation. It would generally go like this: pre-flop, many limpers, I raise in LP, all limpers call, flop comes, checked around to me, I bet the pot, one caller for a heads-up turn, turn card comes, check to me, I bet half the pot, Villain grumps for a while and folds. This sequence was totally agnostic to the actual value of the cards. It's a nice setup, but it's high variance, since the times it doesn't work (usually meeting a jam over my turn bet), I've already put in a significant amount of money. So, whatever. It is what it is.

I definitely made some decent laydowns over the course of that session. I probably also bluffed to much, but it's so hard not to when you see the above pattern emerge, and you know what kind of money you can take down with bluffs. I was also experimenting with a new, more aggressive pre-flop strategy, which definitely upped variance, but (hopefully) gets more money flowing. Basically I'm finding that with that kind of loose-passive pre-flop play, I like to raise a lot more with speculative hands, just to juice the pot up. I don't think the technique holds water from a purely pot-odds perspective, but when you factor in the number of times that a pre-flop raise can lead to a post-flop win with just betting, I think it makes a lot of sense. I was pre-flop raising everything. I mean, not everything, but everything I would normally limp with. The results were so-so. Like...assuming I would take down the same pots post-flop as I normally would, they were bigger. But it also meant that I was often going in pre-flop with the worst of it, and it made it a lot harder to gauge when this was the case (e.g. the AQ vs. AK incident). Also, I was trying to throw in the odd check on the flop after pre-flop raising, which I almost never do. One time it really paid off when it turned out someone in front of me had flopped a junk two-pair; I got out of that trap cheaply. ;)

Anyway. I never dug myself out of the initial hole I fell into. As a rule of thumb, if I'm down less than a buy-in, I don't sweat it too much, but this last session was definitely more than that. If my calculations are correct, I think that's three losing sessions in a row. Bummer. I definitely got the feeling that I was playing badly. It was a little hard to tell, to be honest, because I was trying a bunch of new stuff out which was abnormal for me, and also my opponents played pretty erratically, so it was really hard for me to suss out what was working and what wasn't. All I know for sure is that I booked a pretty significant loss, and that I have no particular thing I can point to about why, except it is undeniable that I was playing more aggressively than usual, and probably also more loosely. I guess the loose-aggressive world is not really one where I'm most comfortable, but it just seemed like the thing to do at that table. I was probably very much mistaken about that, in retrospect, considering the number of times people jammed on me. ;) (To make it better, though, they often did show their cards, and they had a reason to jam, it wasn't just stealing.)

Anyway. I only really remember the specifics on a couple hands.

One was pretty early on, during that dismal first hour. I had raised in late/middle with JJ after several limpers. We went to the flop like five-ways or something stupid like that. The flop came T94. The guy on my right opens the betting for some small amount, relative to the pot. Something like $15 into $60? I raised it, I forget how much, but I probably made it like $50, everyone else folded, and the dude three-bet me all in for like a couple hundred. Huh? I actually tanked on that for quite a while. Not that I shouldn't clearly fold there, but I really had to talk myself into it. Overpairs are such pains in the ass. Most of my hesitation was trying to put him on a hand. I kind of rejected T9. I forget now why...I just did. Eventually I figured set of fours. Anyway, it didn't matter...I eventually folded face-up. He showed T9.

Heh. You know, in retrospect, that hand doesn't seem nearly as significant as it seemed at the time. I guess that's how it goes. :)

One thing that stuck was just a coin flip that I lost. I somehow found myself heads-up OOP with A7c against a pre-flop re-raiser. (Yeah, I made a crappy pre-flop call, so what. Everyone else was doing it!) I flopped pretty much the best I could hope for under the circumstances, all rags with two clubs and a seven. So I check-raised all-in and got called by QQ. No help for me, and I double Villain up. I think I was super close to 50/50 on that, so, clearly I'd take those odds (overlay from the pot, plus...what the hell...even a 1% chance he'll fold puts me in the lead ;) ). Anyway, nothing special about that. Just an example that not all these losses are my fault. ;)

Here's the one that blew my mind. I'm not going to tell you my cards (yet), just so you can see how bizarre I found this guy's play. I believe I was in the big blind for this hand. Maybe six people limped in to the pot, which comes something like A82. It checks around to Villain in middle position who bets out $10 (pot is like $12). Folds around to me, and I check-raise to $30. Interloper, behind me but in front of Villain, cold-calls the check-raise. (This is perfectly normal for this guy and nothing to be worried about; better than even money says that he's got a backdoor draw and will fold on the turn.) Villain calls the raise. Turn comes a blank, like a 6 or something. Pot is now about $100, I bet out $70. Interloper, as always, folds. Villain thinks a little while, then calls. River is a 9. Board is now A8269 rainbow. I bet out $75, thinking I had bet $75 on the turn, but whatever. Villain tanks for several minutes, then folds A8 face-up.

What. The. Fuck. So, firstly, what the hell do you think I have? Secondly, what do you think I have that you can call on the turn and fold on the river?! Bizarre.

Same old stuff?

2008-11-01T20:30:57Z

Well, despite telling myself I was going to stop doing it for a while, I skipped out of work early again last night and went to play poker instead. :) I don't know...I just felt like gambling instead of working. Turns out this would not be the smartest decision I would make, but hey, what is. :) As befits my seemingly recurring pattern lately, I hit an early, crushing rush, eventually took a beat, and then spiraled down. I was keeping fairly careful watch this time, I felt, and I really don't think there's much to this...it's just how things are happening to shake out lately. As the night went on, I did become aware that I was playing a little more loosely and crazily, but not to the tune of huge losses, and it was just that kind of table that encourages a bit more pre-flop looseness (passive play early, with the potential of payoffs if I hit). What this table was not was a table where I could bluff my way to victory, so...I didn't. This was much more the kind of thing where I just had to wait for the cards to come. Sadly, after my initial rush, they didn't, so I did basically a slow bleed and then ended up walking away booking a loss. Sometimes, it just goes like that.

The early rush was amazing. The star hand of the night was my KK vs. Villain's AK with a K on the flop. Cha-ching! Astoundingly, all the money went in on the flop (he jammed, not me!), and I stacked the guy to the tune of $200 and change. Sad, too, it was only like his second or third hand. A bit later, I held KK again and flopped a monstrous K55 (with several pre-flop callers), but got no action post-flop. More on that later. I won a couple of smaller or medium pots here and there, and I found myself doing pretty nicely. Then followed a couple hours of zip. :) Then, probably about halfway through the session, I was all-in on the flop with a weak combo draw (medium flush plus gutshot) vs. top-pair/medium kicker plus gutshut. No help for me, and I lose a big chunk. Villain had a smaller stack than me, but he still took a big chunk out...maybe $250 or so? But anyway...after that and another few misses here and there, I was about back to even.

The latter half of the session was just dull, dull, dull. I caught nothing for hours, and even found myself in a couple nasty spots. One was flopping bottom two against a made flush. Thankfully I jetted out of that one (being three-bet all-in over my check-raise gave me a good indication that I shouldn't be in that hand ;) ). Also I ran one bluff at a really bad time, it turns out. That one was basically just on a read, it wasn't a semi-bluff or anything. It just turned out I had totally pegged the guy wrong on that one. Eh, it happens. Everything else was just standard missed flops or missed draws, and I pretty much just pissed away chips until I was tired and hungry and I decided to go. Ho hum.

So, the afterthought. In this hand, I was somewhere in MP with KK. I raised after two limpers, got a couple callers behind me, and we ended up going I think five-way to the flop. The flop came K55 with two diamonds. It checked to me, and I bet out, it folded around to one guy who thought about it for a little while, and he eventually folded. One thing I think about from time to time is that I rarely slowplay any more. Apparently this has somehow become me not slowplaying at all. :) I mean...that seems like a great place to slowplay. What could I possibly be afraid of? AA catching an A? Some 5 catching a 5? I mean, that's crazy talk. There's definitely an argument to be made that I don't want a diamond to show up, as it may kill any putative action I might have gotten without it, but I feel it's just as likely that a diamond could give someone second-best, not to mention that if someone stays in to catch a diamond and give me action, surely they'll call a flop bet to chase it, too. But what I really want is to check and let some underpair catch their set, know what I mean?

Anyway. I'm not agonizing over it. Generally speaking, and especially true at that particular table, I feel there's better reasoning to bet there rather than check. That is to say, I don't think I'm particularly losing money by not slowplaying. One of the big factors in that thought process, though, is that I play a fairly aggressive game, and I expect people to know that. And in most cases, they do. Like...I don't think it takes long for my opponents to suss out that I play on the aggressive side and am more than likely to be c-betting on any flop once I've raised pre-flop. With that in mind, I'm likely to be betting both my bad flops and my good flops, even if my good flops are monsters. The theory is that my habitual c-betting generates action on the hands where I flop good. What I failed to take into account on this hand, though, was that it was pretty early in my session, relatively speaking. I had probably only been at the table an hour or so when this hand took place, and the only big hand anyone had seen me play was when I called all-in on the flop with top set. I mean...nothing tricky about that. :) So it's just possible that this would have been a good time to slowplay, since theoretically, nobody there had me pegged as a habitual c-better. Because they all folded to my flop bet, if I had checked and elicited action on the turn, anything there would have been more money than what I ended up getting. This is a hugely results-oriented thought, though, and so I don't know if it holds across the board, but...it's definitely something to keep in mind for the future -- to not only base my moves on a strategy that (hopefully) takes into account my overall image, but also to be aware of what my image might be right then. In that case, checking would not have been necessarily seen as way out of character, and therefore a trick. :) It may have actually have been seen as what it was supposed to look like: weakness.

Anyway, I'm probably overthinking that one hand. It just stuck in my mind. Villain didn't show his cards, but he later said he had pocket jacks. (I had showed my hand already.) So checking that flop may well have gotten a little more money out of him on the turn. Plus I stood to stack him if he catches his J. But in the broad sense...I don't know. I'm still more likely to bet that flop than not. Just in the future I should remember to keep in mind what the tables knows about me so far, and not just how I play in general.

Also one random thought I had. One of the dealers, who knows me a bit, said after his down: "You play way too tight, man!" I'm sure this was true from his point of view, as this was during my slow phase, and I basically spent the whole time folding pre-flop. I just thought that was funny he would say that, as I know there are other dealers who think I play ridiculously loose and crazy, mostly because they happen to be around when I'm on a mad bluffing spree. ;) At any rate, I just thought it was interesting that the dealers at the Trop, who I'm sure have observed more of my play than anyone except me, have these wildly varying views of me. I generally take that as a good thing; I think it almost always behooves a poker player to keep his play unpredictable. ;) It also, though, highlights the idea that my play may be somewhat...inconsistent. I realize I'm just splitting hairs, and that "inconsistent" is probably just the same thing as "unpredictable," just with different connotations. But still...I wonder if my style is swinging more wildly from session to session than I'm really intending. Might be something to keep an eye on.

Until next time, poker people. Peace!

Multi-session wrapup

2008-10-28T03:48:50Z

So I've been kinda lax with my poker blogging of late. I've had a few sessions, but nothing really remarkable. For posterity's sake, I'll do some recaps here. For interest's sake, I think these can safely be skipped without you guys missing out on anything.

Friday night (8/17) - a.k.a. "The night of king-deuce" - This was one of those times where I very quickly got swept up in the spirit of joviality at the game, and I strayed quite far from my usual style. It turned out to be (for me) more of a night to kick back and blow off stream, rather than a night to maximize EV. This is no more garishly illustrated by that nights' propensity for me to play king-deuce like it was aces.

See...at some point over the course of the night, the table more or less came to a consensus that king-deuce was "the hand." It started with somebody playing it, hitting, and then winning. Then it happened again, so it started gaining notoriety. Then somebody raised with it and took it down pre-flop. Later still, somebody did a stop-and-go, slowplaying it on the flop, but then taking it down with a later bet. I remarked at some point that the betting aggression with king-deuce was escalating. "The next move," I announced, "is a check-raise all-in."

Yeah, well, you can imagine the kind of shit that'll get me into. :) Especially when I later did exactly that, a check-raise all-in on the turn holding the mighty king-deuce. And you know what? The move probably would have worked...if my opponent wasn't holding quads. Thankfully, he had a lesser stack than me, but still. Oh, well. Anyway, as it turned out, I tried the same move later on, only this time it was a pre-flop three-bet all-in out-of-position against a bigger stack. His holding? Pocket aces. Rebuy! So, yes, my belief in king-deuce was so strong that night that I raised all-in with it...into the nuts. Twice. Yikes. :) It was so bad, the dealer even admonished me. "You gotta stop playing that shit!" he says. Word.

The night held much other similar tomfoolery. By the end, though, I managed to climb my way back up to almost even, which I consider something of a miracle, considering how I was playing. Undoubtedly this was helped by the number of times a king-deuce bluff succeeded, but still. Happy to walk away with only a modest loss. :)

Tuesday morning (10/21) - This was a rare non-Tropicana experience for me, as I stopped by Bally's instead to wait for a friend to get off work so we could grab lunch. The session turned out actually to be several hours, but it was a sick-ass rush. I started off opening the table, so I picked off a pot here and there while people were still getting their bearings. Then I picked up queens and stacked a short-buy-in guy who couldn't lay down top pair. A bit later, I picked up aces (against a different short stack) and this time got cracked...I think by queens, actually, if I recall correctly. A very short while later, I got aces again. Now this one was completely bizarre at first, as it ended up being a three-way all-in pre-flop! This turned out to be less bizarre than it appeared at first, as the three hands in question were aces, kings, and queens. Wow. Aces held up, and I now no longer cared about them being cracked early on.

At any rate, things just continued going very smoothly for me for the rest of the day. Over the course of the session I picked up aces like four or five times, I think, and I believe the only time they didn't hold up was that first time. I hit sets, I hit draws...I just generally had a good run of cards, and I eventually took off booking a pretty nice profit for the day. Good times.

Wednesday night (10/22) - This session started off amazingly well, but took a giant nosedive about halfway through. And when I say started, I mean right off the bat. In my second hand at the table, I picked up pocket aces in the BB, and they actually held up on a paired, three-flush, four-straight board. A few hands later, I had AQ in LP and flopped top two and got paid off nicely. Not even an orbit in, and I was already on my way to a double-up. Then...about two hours of nothing. :) I switched seats to my favored 9-seat, and just to be cheeky, I open-raised with KcJc in EP. It goes five ways to the flop. So much for people giving a shit that I just folded for two hours. :) The flop comes a pretty nice-looking AcKhxc, so I get second pair, decent kicker, nut flush draw. $50 in the pot, and I lead out for $40. Some dude min-raises me. All others fold, back to me. So. $170 in the pot, $40 to call, and I've got several hundred behind. He has me covered by a generous amount. I'm basically sick of this shit, and I jam it all-in. This is kind of a new thing for me, which I'll explain more after the recaps. Anyway, he tanks for many, many minutes. Eventually he folds. He claims to have had AQ. At the time, I didn't really believe him, but as the night progresses he'd shown himself to play oddly pre-flop, so...I dunno. It coulda been. I didn't show.

Anyway, a couple tough losses followed. As the night wore on, I had aces cracked by AQ, all-in pre-flop, which was massively un-fun. I had QQ cracked by AK, which isn't so bad, but I wasted a bunch of money on it thinking I was protecting against a flush draw instead of betting into the flopped K. My bad. The worst hit I took was when I somehow got caught with 98, flopped a 9, and was calling down with what I was pretty sure was the best hand against an aggressive player who doesn't need a hand to be taking multiple shots at the pot. The river came an 8, giving me my second pair. All the money went in, and I lost to pocket eights: I was good the whole way, and he spiked a one-outter to give me my cooler. Ouch!

My night ended when I made what I thought was a hero call against another aggressive player. I had something like second or third pair, and I was tanking facing a river bet, when I suddenly felt he was weak and I could totally beat him. (I couldn't blow him off the hand with a raise, btw -- his bet had me close to all in.) Turns out...I was half right. :) He was weak, in the sense that he had the same pair I did, but his kicker beat mine by a pip! Damn! :) I walked away from this one booking a big loss. I'll reflect more on this session later on in the post.

Thursday evening (10/23) - This one was a really brief session as I waited for my mom to finish up what she was doing so we could go to dinner. I knew I was only going to be a little while, so I took it as free license to run roughshod over the whole table, which I did with unnecessarily joyful abandon. :) I didn't win a lot, but I won, and it was a good feeling to have done that without good cards. :)

Saturday evening (10/25) - This was almost identical to the last one, a short session while waiting on somebody else to finish up. I kinda did the same thing of running over people, but I actually lost a legitimate hand to a better kicker, so that took a little chunk out. A tiny win.

Thoughts - And I think that catches me up. The session that gave me the most to think about was Wednesday night, when I got off to a roaring start, hit a couple beats, and then spiraled down. I think in a lot of ways it mirrors this session, in the sense that things started out well enough, and when they weren't going well, I was still fine...until I hit a beat. It wasn't even a bad beat...it was just a beat. Well, okay, the aces against AQ was bad, but I don't think that's the one that set me off. I think it was the QQ vs. AK. Anyway...the point is that I'm certain I started playing much looser after the beat happened, in both cases. Also in both cases, that kind of play just led to ruin. That's definitely something I gotta work on more -- keeping that stuff under control.

Oh, and the all-in thing. For those who skipped the recap, here's the situation: I have KcJc, and because I (wrongly, it turns out) assume I have a tight image, I've opened for a raise pre-flop in EP. We've gone to the flop five-handed to see AcKhxc, so I've flopped second pair and the nut flush draw. Pot is $50, and I lead out $40. It folds to a guy who min-raises me (remember this is a flat call of an EP raise pre-flop). Everyone else folds. So it's $170 in the pot, and I'm facing action of $40. I've got several hundred behind, and Villain has me covered. I jammed.

This may seem overly aggressive, but I've been working on something lately where I'm trying to go all-in more. Overall, I do try to take a more math-centric view to my poker strategizing. But I've really come to respect the psychological difference of the all-in move. It's one thing to mathematically commit yourself to a hand. And it's quite another to actually push all your chips in the middle and say without any possibility of equivocation, "I'm going to see this through to the end." And the side-effects on both your own psyche and that of your opponents is big, too. You both become quite aware that you (the jammer) no longer have any decisions to be made; now all the heat is on the person facing the decision. Anything that makes opponents uncomfortable is a good thing. :)

In the past, I would mostly only go all-in late in the hand, generally on the river, and usually as a raise, not a bet. And I'd pretty much have to be certain about it, like I'd need the nuts, or close to it. In short, I'd thought of it more as a value bet...something I'd want to be called and would use to maximize my return. I'm trying to work it more into a bluffing/semi-bluffing strategy, though, just to balance things out a bit more and, hopefully, win a few more pots. :) But anyway...so there's that. Just another thing to chew over.

Bonus: As an extra bit of entertainment from Wednesday's session, we had a guy at the table fold a couple bills in half lengthwise into a "V" shape, put a chip on top of one end, and balance the whole contraption on his nose like a circus seal. It was pretty cool! You don't get that kind of stuff with online poker!

How the mighty have fallen

2008-10-14T06:59:04Z

In summary: I wasn't sure I should be playing or not tonight when I set out for the poker room, since I wasn't sure I was 100% all there, but I threw caution to the wind and went anyway. As my session got rolling, all my fears were put to rest as I was totally in the zone, caught good cards, made good moves, and basically came in and rolled over the whole table. During the first hour, I was totally blazing. About three and a half hours in, I hit my first big beat, thought it wasn't a bad beat, it was just a big confrontation that I lost. After that, I went on a disgusting run of playing too loose, bluffing too much, and generally spewing a lot of chips around. I ended the session booking a moderate loss, and generally bummed about how I handled the later part of the session. Oh, well, though...hopefully I'm just better prepared for next time.

There really isn't much to go over in the specific hand notes; most of the night my hands pretty much played themselves, with a couple exceptions here and there. As usual, this is all 1/2 NLHE.

I was only like half and orbit into my night when I picked up pocket aces in fairly early position. This was made slightly uncomfortable by my not having yet seen anybody raise pre-flop at the table, so I didn't know what the standard raise was. I settled on $10. A guy a couple seats down re-raised me to $25. It folded back around to me and I three-bet it...maybe $40 more? He called, the flop was rags, and I led out and took it down. Later on, a similar story with KK: I raised pre-flop, got two callers on whom I had position, and I took it down with a flop c-bet on an ace-high flop. Another miscellaneous win or two, and I was off to a great start.

My favorite was right toward the end of that first hour. I already had both the stack and the image to play more aggressively, so I made it $15 to go with pocket nines. I got four callers, with the big blind taking a bit of extra time to think about it. I got the impression that he wanted to re-raise, but lost his nerve. (A word about this guy: he was a pretty solid player, I knew that, but not overly tricky. He knew as well as I did, though, that most of the other people in the hand couldn't have been too strong, so I didn't give him a really strong hand, but he still had decent starters.) Anyway, the flop comes queen-high, and the BB leads out for $25. The pot is like $75, and I feel I have him solidly pegged: I give him a big queen, AQ or KQ. I marked his flop bet as a probe; he hit the flop and wanted to see where he stood. Beyond that, though, I was sure he gave my bets respect. I felt that I could take the pot down right then with a raise, especially because his flop bet was such a small portion of the pot (1/3, pretty uncharacteristic of him, I felt, though I hadn't seen that much of his play). Anyway, I make it $75 to go. The other pre-flop callers all drop out, and he thinks a bit, and then mucks AQ face up! I felt really good about myself: dead-on with the read. He said, "Nice hand." I thanked him, pulled in the pot, and mucked my cards. Then he said, "But a hell of a raise if it was a bluff." I laughed in a dismissive way that I hoped said to him, "Yeah, like I'd really bluff in that spot." Regardless if he bought that or not, I was pretty sure I couldn't pull that move on him again. But I was at least glad I did it once. :)

Much later on, I flopped a set of sevens that got handsomely paid off when I stacked a guy who had simultaneously flopped top two. No-brainer there, but it was nice to pull in the money.

Then came the hand where the wheels fell off. The hand itself is actually pretty uninteresting. I was in the BB. Action had folded around to the button, who tended to raise pre-flop with pretty much anything. Astoundingly, he raised. :) SB folded, and I squeezed pocket queens. He had made it I think $15, so I went to $45. He thought about it for a bit, and then called. This didn't really say anything; this guy was super loose pre-flop, but pretty conservative post-flop. I got the impression by watching him play that his pre-flop looseness was just part of his strategy, not an indication of bad play. In any case, the flop came jack-high with two-spades. Neither of my queens is a spade. To make a long story short, he had jack-rag suited in spades and had flopped top pair/flush draw, all the money went in on the flop, and he turned the flush for the win.

Like I said, not an interesting hand. It's not even a very interesting beat; on that flop, it's so close to a 50/50 shot that it's not even funny, so we both easily had the odds to put our money in, what with the pre-flop overlay. (We were both in for $45 pre-flop, and he had like $150 behind post-flop. I had him covered by a mile.) So there was nothing particular in that hand that should have changed my attitude or my play.

But, for whatever reason, I couldn't shake it off. My play got markedly worse after that hand, and I'm sad to say that the majority of my losses that followed were, I think, just horrible bluffs. This was not the table to be running bluffs, really. That one I talked about above with the pocket nines was definitely a special case: I had a good read on the guy, and I was sure he would respect my raise. He was without a doubt one of the better players at the table. (Basically, the kind of guy I can bluff.) I then started trying to bluff other people, people with much less ability to get off hands. Also I'm sure the frequency increase of my aggressive moves made people want to call me more. The final nail in my coffin was when I was overplaying a crappy pocket pair, trying to move a guy off a hand pre-flop. I actually liked the move, and I actually think it would have worked...except my mark happened to be sitting on aces. Whoops! :) He jammed it pre-flop and I was able to escape the hand, thank God, but not before I wasted a pretty penny on it. Them's the breaks.

Aside from all the crap moves I tried (and failed) to pull, I also just wasn't catching anything any more, and when I was, I would get no money. One sticks in my mind in particular: I flopped a set of fives (Presto!) on a flop of AK5, five-handed, and got zero action. How do you flop a set on a board of AK5 and get no one who caught a piece of that? So sad. :) The money I didn't lose bluffing I lost with loose calls that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Oh, and one final indignity for the night: There were two, count 'em, two blind chops that I was aware of the whole time I was at the table. I was involved in both of them. In one of them, I had pocket aces. Doh!

Anyway. I became gradually and painfully aware that I was tired, hungry, and playing like crap, so I just decided it was time to eat my losses and call it a night. I left feeling pretty disappointed with myself. Mostly because not only was a playing really poorly, but I knew it, and I didn't (a) correct it, or (b) stop playing. I fell victim to that hope that I could just hit that one turnaround hand...that one miracle win that would put me back on track. More often than not, chasing such a thing is a fool's errand, and I really should know better. I'm glad I got up from the table basically under my own steam, like I didn't bust out or anything before I left, so at least I eventually took advantage of the knowledge that I was playing like crap. Just next time I hope to realize it sooner and actually do something about it. Second choice is getting up and leaving the table. First choice is, of course, to stop playing like crap and start playing better again. Next time.

[WRGPT18] It's that time again

2008-10-10T21:16:22Z

Yep, it's that time of the year. The annual, venerable, really slow-ass, play-by-email poker tournament, WRGPT, has opened registration for it's 18th run. Contrary to my thoughts from last year, I actually am going to give it another try this year, as I think I can mitigate my timeout problem by creating a completely separate email account to use for WRGPT that I can use on breaks at work. So...we'll see how that goes; I'll try and feel it out during the practice round.

Anyway. If you're interested, registration closes on October 31st. Sign up here!

Just like the old days...only better

2008-10-04T05:53:44Z

Things were slow at work again tonight, so I took another early out and headed to the Trop to ply my other trade. Once again, I decided to keep an eye out for limit hold 'em opportunities, just to take a break from NL and keep things fresh and exciting (and, hopefully, lower variance). Sadly, there was no pink game being spread tonight, although their normal limit games (2/4 and 3/6) were kicked up a notch as there was a 5/10 game going. If I consider myself bankrolled for 1/2 NL, I gotta consider myself bankrolled for 5/10, so I decided to give it a shot. I pondered the wisdom of this as I sat down, as the game was a little short, but things seemed to be going all right, so I set down to grind it out.

Turns out I needn't have bothered. I went on a disgusting rush that basically lasted me the whole night. ("The whole night" being somewhat disingenuous, I guess, as I took my sick rush and cashed out after a few hours, but what the hell. :) ) There were two or three super-fish at the table, plus a mediocre player here and there, and between that and being smacked with the deck, I made a really good night of it. I was catching not only good starters, but good boards and opponents to pay me off. AK offsuit: I get the nut four-flush; KK: ace on the flop, I turn the nut four-flush; 99: set on the flop, boat on the river. Strong aces outkicking weak aces. Draws coming through. Everything was just right. That, of course, got me a little looser and wilder, and then those hands started coming through. I saw a flop with 34, Flopped a 3, turned a 4, and then rivered another 4! I flopped middle pair and hit a backdoor flush to crack aces.

My favorite hand of the night: I have KcTc in late position and cold-call two bets after like four people. We see the flop six-handed, which comes jack-high with two clubs. The betting is capped on the flop four-ways, with me in position on the field. Turn comes a Q, adding the open-ended straight draw to my flush draw. I bet the turn and got two callers. The river comes a red 9, and I've got the nuts with one caller paying off my river bet. Almost a $200 pot! Just crazy.

I'd like to be able to say that it was through cunning and advanced training that I made this money, but that's really not the case. I was just catching hand after hand, and the opposition was, overall, so weak that it didn't even matter. Every check-raise went through, and every one was paid. I made a river bluff raise. In limit. And it worked! I mean, that's just sick. (That one was against one of the big donators, and I was sure I had him read.)

Anyway. So a great night of poker. Better money than the day job, plus a short enough session that I've still got plenty of time left to chill for a while. Wish every session could be like this!

P.S.

2008-09-27T09:53:12Z

Just one more thing I wanted to note from tonight. As I made my return to poker recently, I had also told myself that I was going to play more limit hold 'em in addition to my new no-limit ways, just to keep things varied and interesting and also hopefully to cut down on variance a smidge. I also, though, want to play at decent-ish stakes just so I know that the rake won't eat me alive. At the Trop tonight, they actually got around to spreading a Pink Game, the $7.50/$15 limit game that is by far my favorite limit game to play, and is spread all too rarely these days. I was just getting into my 1/2 game, though, when I heard the announcement, and I decided to skip it. Sad, since I don't get the chance to play that game much any more, but...well, I dunno. I think it was the right thing to do. Still...in retrospect, it feels a little strange that I didn't play it. Guess I really am changing a lot as a player.

I like weekends

2008-09-27T09:41:35Z

I took another short day at work tonight, so I decided to try and make good use of my time playing poker. Nothing really Earth-shattering went on at this session, so there's not a lot to go over lesson-wise. There was a waiting list when I first got to the casino, but after only a few minutes they opened up a new 1/2 NLHE table, so I plopped down and started my night.

I've decided I much prefer opening a table to joining a table already in progress. When a new table opens, with the buy-in cap, I'm never facing a big stack right off the bat. Not only that, but with all the people that buy in short, sometimes I am the big stack. ;) Also everyone is more or less new to each other, so that gives me license to open up a bit more and play a little more fast and loose than I do by default.

This I did for the first little while at tonight's session. It actually went pretty well; I was buying pots here and there, and I ran myself up about $100. Then I got a string of good hands. AA, I raised pre-flop from EP and got no callers. Then KK in late position. A middle position player opened for $12 (standard raise), one caller, then I pop it to $50. Everybody folds. Then I get QQ. A different middle position player opens for $12, it folds to me, I make it $35, others fold, opener calls. I take it down on the K-high flop with a bet. Those three hands happened in fairly rapid succession, so I realized that even playing fast and loose wasn't apparently gaining me any extra action, so I started thinking about slowing down a little bit.

I will now recount the dirtiest hand I played all night. :) I limped in on the button with 85 off after a few limpers, and we end up seeing the flop six-handed. The flop comes K64 rainbow, giving me a gutshot draw. One of the blinds, a new player to the table but a solid and tricky guy, opens for $12, a pot-sized bet. It folds around to me. We're heads-up, I've got position and a crappy draw, and I figure there's just a good a chance that this guy has air as a king, so I raise it to $35. He calls. Oops. I guess it wasn't air. The turn comes a 6, pairing the board. Villain checks to me, and I figure I've got to take it down now or not at all, so I make it $50 to go. He snap-calls, and I know I'm sunk. I guess he has the king after all. His snap-call told me that he was reading me for a bluff, too, so I know I can't take it down on the river. I resign myself to the loss, but a beautiful 7 slides off on the river, and I spike my gutshot. So dirty. Now I'm so glad he's read me for a bluff. :) He checks to me, and I give it a small Hollywood pause. I know I can bet big here, because he thinks I'm bluffing. I make it $75, and he only pauses a beat before calling. I apologize and tell him I hit my gutshot. He flashes a king, and mucks his hand. (He later claimed to have king-jack, but I actually have my doubts that his kicker was that strong. I really gave him a lower kicker than that. Of course, I don't really have a reason to disbelieve him, so that might have been the truth. Tough one.) He picked up and left soon after that. Sorry, man. I do love them gutshots. ;)

Anyway. At that point I was up about $200, and I figured I'd used up my fast-and-loose karma for the day, so I went back to tight mode. Between that and the then crappy run of cards I got, I sat there and folded for about the next two hours. :) Serves me right. After so much doing nothing, I started loosening up again and taking shots here and there, but things weren't quite so easy any more as the table had fallen into more of a rhythm and I was trying to fight against it. Not very Zen. Anyway, I gave back a lot of my profit on bad bluffs and even worse calls, so that didn't go too well. I corrected my course, though, and brought myself back up to a decent stack...maybe about $150 ahead after I stacked a short-stack guy who had just been losing all night. Opened for an EP raise of $15, it folded around to me and I popped it to $55 (his stack size) to isolate with pocket eights. It worked and I isolated, and we were off to the races when he tabled QJ off. I was happy to take the coin flip, frankly, and I won the race, so I bid him farewell and stacked his chips.

The final hour or so of play is mostly a haze to me. I stayed too long this time, methinks. I wasn't particularly tired, but I was really zoned. I caught myself losing focus on the game, and even memory of what had transpired. I know I dropped almost $100 bucks and I couldn't even remember how. Going back over the hands in my mind, I maybe accounted for $30 or so in losses, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how I had bled off so much of my stack without realizing it. It's possible that having nothing but a Snickers bar for dinner affected my mental abilities somewhat. At any rate, I fought my way back up, and then, I'm ashamed to admit, bought a nice pot off a guy in a horribly mercenary and cutthroat fashion. But, hey, poker is poker, and I needs mah money. I figured between that and my realization that I was losing track of what was happening at the table, it was time to call it a night. I booked a nice win tonight ($250), and it sure beats the doldrums at work. A guy could get used to this. ;)

Peace out, everybody.

What goes up, must come down.

2008-09-24T08:24:09Z

Probably the less said about tonight's session, the better. :) It was pretty much the polar opposite of yesterday, in that I was pretty much card dead the whole time. That's not completely true, as later on I caught a few nice hands and actually managed to take down a pot or two, but overall things didn't go too well today. The game is, of course, 1/2 NLHE.

To give you an idea of the pace of today's session, my first two and a half hours were spent folding, folding, folding. Only once did I enter a pot, and that one I took a stab at after missing the flop, and got blown out by a turn bet. A couple hands after that, I flopped two pair out of position and basically got no action on it (though that one was my own fault for playing it passively; I honestly expected there to be more action on the hand behind me, but...oh, well.) So pretty much the first half of my night was a big yawn.

Things picked up slightly after that, though nothing really exciting went down. It was basically me getting blown off of semi-bluffs alternating with me taking down pots uncontested. One I remember was pocket jacks, wherein my pre-flop raising got me heads-up with the table's loosest and craziest player. The flop came ace high, and I bet out, hoping just to run him off if he missed, but he called. The turn came a king (could it get any uglier?), and I just fired again, basically having nothing else to do. He folded, and I took it down. The other notable win was having pocket kings in late position. Somebody had raised it to $5 early on, and there were two callers to that when it got back to me. I popped it to $20. The guy on my left, who had called the $5 out of turn, then called the $20. Loose Crazy Guy called out of a blind, and the other people in for $5 also called. The flop was three rags with two hearts. Checks around to me, I bet $75 (into a pot of $100). It folds around to the guy on my right, who is really giving it a lot of thought. Finally he folds, so I take that pot down, too.

That's pretty much it. I lost two big hands in a row, though, and those two hands basically spoke to me to call it quits for the night, so this is how my session ended.

In the first one, I'm in the big blind. The guy to my left (a different guy than the guy to my left above), UTG, looks at his cards, announced, "I've been waiting for this hand all night! I raise!" and he goes to $17. This guy was a total motormouth, and he'd been at the table the whole time I was there. Based on all the comments he's been making all night, I'm almost positive he has jack-nine. Whatever, though. :) There's a flat call to his left, then a bunch of other callers. Geez! It comes back to me in the BB, and I squeeze a pair of ladies, pocket queens. I announce a raise, complete the $17, and think for a minute. While I'm counting callers, UTG mucks his hand. (Technically this is an out of turn move, since I haven't completed my action yet. A little dealer trivia for y'all.) Somebody else complains, there's a little back-and-forth, but it's of no consequence. There are five other players in the pot, so I make it $75 more to go. This may seem a bit excessive, but it was basically a pot-sized raise. UTG+1, who flat called UTG's raise, calls me. Hrm. Not only that, but that call puts him basically all-in. Hrm again. It folds around, and then further down the line, this girl in middle position also calls. She says something like, "Let's make this hard on the overpair," or something like that. Frankly I didn't really understand what she meant by that. In any case, her call left her something like...probably a hundred and change behind. UTG+1 has got like $30 left. I've got them both covered by a couple hundred, so I figure no matter what happens, I have to jam the flop. Sadly, the flop comes ace-high. I jam, short-stack calls, and the middle position girl folds. Short stack has AK. Oh, well. The flop has two hearts, and one of my queens is a heart (and AK has no hearts), and the turn gives me slightly more hope by coming a heart, but the river is no help, and I lose. Bummer, but hey, I can't complain too much about that one. It was a coin flip with a big overlay, so hey, I'd take it again next time. I'm pretty sure that the middle position girl had a pocket pair. That's just her way.

So I'm bummed about that hand, but not shaken. The next hand, I'm in the small blind. There's some limping or so, but late position girl raises to $17. There's one caller, and it's back to me. I squeeze KJ off, and steam call it, mostly just since it's one of my favorite hands. Note that this is a crappy call, and I know that. I just felt like mixing it up after that last hand. Anyway, I no longer care about the crappy call when the flop comes KJx rainbow. Cha-ching! Not giving a shit about EV and just wanting to take down the pot, I jam it all in. (I'm first to act, remember.) Basically I wouldn't mind at all just taking down the pot, but I also figure people might read me as steaming and call the bet. Middle position girl shrugs, sighs, and calls off her last hundred or so. I find this an excellent sign, as I don't think she's good at this point. The third party folds. I roll over my KJ and wait. She called me with ace-queen and turns the gutshot straight. River no help, and I double her up. So, so dirty. She called off her last hundred to make $150 on a gutshot draw. And made it! Hate! Hate so much!

Anyway. At that point I figured it just wasn't my night tonight. It was getting late, and I had already figured I'd be done by then, so I just finished out my orbit and left. Suck. I came home and made dinner. In fact it's waiting for me right now as I type, so I'm going to sign off, eat, chill, and let the sadness of the beats ebb from my body. Better luck next time, huh?

So dirty!

The stars align

2008-09-23T08:10:55Z

I'll try and keep it brief this time, mostly because this was a great session, and I don't have too much to go over in the way of lessons. There were no 1/2 seats open when I first showed up, so I passed a bit of time at a 2/4 limit game. I wasn't sure if it was a good omen or not that on my very first hand, I got dealt KK in the big blind and they held up nicely against multiway action by flopping a set. :) On the one hand, it's nice to start the day so well. On the other hand, it was at 2/4, and regardless, you know it's all going to be downhill from there. :) Anyway, I'll forgive myself for not logging that session in my records. I'm sure my results will stand up to the discrepancy of that 15 minute, $3 swing. :)

Anyway, soon enough a new 1/2 NLHE table opened up, and I jumped right in. What a world of difference from last night's opposition. Firstly, it was nice to not have to sit down with a bunch of giant stacks. Half the table bought in short anyway, and I was able to take decent control early on just with aggression. I abandoned last night's strategy of rock-like play and just started mixing it up right away. I had mixed results with that, frankly, but I won a bit and enjoyed the action. We started off short-handed, too, which let me cut loose a bit more than usual. It wasn't long, though, until the table filled up, and one of those players was the reason things went so well tonight.

We had a super, super, super fish sit down and join us. Firstly, this guy was in for a pre-flop raise probably on 80% of his hands. Not kidding. Secondly, though, and more importantly, he would stack off with anything, and then instantly rebuy. It was amazing. This is absolutely not an exaggeration, but I stacked this guy six or seven times over the course of the night. It was incredibly juicy. Not only that, but he just could not be swayed from playing. Like I said, he sat down not too long after the table opened, and he was with us the whole time. He was still there when I left. I know, I know, there was no reason I should have left that situation. I was just tired and getting punchy. I caught myself getting way looser than I should have been, and that's a recipe for disaster when I'm the big stack; it's way too easy for me to give back too much money that way. So I don't feel bad about leaving. I was just happy to (finally!) book a win.

There's not much to go over. I ran a few decent bluffs, and I had a few bluffs picked off. All in all, I think that part of the game went well. It was, of course, always a mistake to bluff Superfish since he was willing to stack off with anything. I, of course, tried it once and got snapped off for my trouble, but I deserved it. It's one of the first rules: never bluff a calling station. Honestly, though, everything just magically clicked into place for my game tonight; I got good cards, and I got paid off. Not much more you can ask for than that.

I just can't get over my experiences with Superfish. The (failed) bluff I ran against him was pretty early on in the session. He made himself a pretty nice stack with that hand (there was a third guy involved), but within two or three hands he gave half of it away. A couple hands later, I get QQ in early position and open for a standard raise of $10. Superfish raises me to $40, it comes back around, and I jam it. So for his action, the pot is like $80 and he calls off the rest of his stack (maybe $150) with...ace-nine off. He gets crushed on the flop of Q22, and I stack him. He rebuys.

Seriously, less than an orbit later, I'm dealt AA in middle position. UTG opens for $6. It comes around to me, and I make it $15. Two flat callers behind me, and Superfish in the small blind pops it to $45. Blinds fold, UTG folds, I jam, having everybody covered. The two flat callers behind me fold. Superfish doesn't even hesitate, and he calls. This time? Ace-jack off. Stack. Rebuy.

All night! Seriously! I opened for a raise with KQ suited, flop trip kings, jam into Superfish, and stack him. I came into a multiway pot with 77, I crush the flop of 755, and I stack Superfish with QQ and another guy in the hand with AK. (?!) The worst I did to him was suck out runner-runner Broadway on one hand when he had position on me. I jammed it, I stacked him. The worst he did was crack AK and QQ with five-freakin'-deuce offsuit when he called $75 cold pre-flop. Yes. It's a 1/2 game. He was facing a raise and re-raise to $75, and calls it cold with five-deuce off. He caught a straight that hand, stacked the QQ and took a chunk out of the AK, which happened to be me, by they way. ;) Sick stuff. :)

Anyway. High-variance game, as I'm sure you can imagine. It worked out well for me, though. This time, anyway. But I'm happy to have booked a win, and I'm happy to have had such a fine opponent at my table. Hope I see him again soon!

P.S. I won a dollar on a prop bet, too!

Afterthought

2008-09-22T08:03:16Z

I talk too damn much. I spent not even five hours playing poker tonight, and way more than an hour blogging about it. That's a terrible ratio. :) That may have had something to do with why I stopped blogging for a while, too. :) But, yes, I be wordy.

Not...so bad?

2008-09-22T07:24:11Z

Tonight's session was on the short side, considering how much time I had available to devote to it, but as we'll see, I got to the point where I think I was losing my concentration and discipline, so I figured it was a good time to leave, so...I did. :)

I booked a loss again tonight, about $100 (at 1/2 NLHE), but I consider it a good sign that I didn't lose even more, considering the massive cooler I ran into. Overall I think I did fairly well. I have the nagging feeling that I didn't bring my A game to the table, but that may just be a tainted impression from the final, oh, half-hour or so when I really loosened things up. In any case, it's not that important; I don't think anything hugely significant went down, with one or two exceptions.

The overall project tonight for me was to come in and grind, grind, grind. While pondering the point I took away from the last session, that I bluff too much and at inopportune times, I wondered if I was just mixing it up too much in general: playing too loose, too fast, and above all inappropriately to the table texture. So today's project was to come in and play super-tight for as long as I could and use the time to study what was going on around me. As luck would have it, the cards cooperated in making this an easy task. For the first solid hour-and-half, I did basically nothing. I caught very little playable in the hole, and even when I did catch something mediocre, I'd either fold it from EP or limp and lay it down to a threatening raise. But for sure during that time I caught no pocket pairs, no strong aces, no suited aces...basically nothing that would warrant me putting money at risk. The only action I saw at all was when I allowed myself to break the monotony by limping late with garbage and taking down the pot on the flop with a bluff.

As far as what I wanted to accomplish for myself, that worked out well. For my EV, it worked out like crap. There was a ridiculous amount of money on the table, and there was so much loose play that the money was just there for the taking if I only could catch a hand. I couldn't, but oh, well. I didn't sweat it, frankly, as my primary goal tonight was discipline.

The cold streak finally ended when I caught pocket jacks in EP and took down the pot on the flop. And that hand itself shows the kind of opposition I was dealing with: I'm a guy who hasn't done anything except fold and limp-fold for a full 90 minutes; then I open with a 6x raise in UTG+1 and still get three callers. Then I take it down with a pot bet on a king-high flop. Whatever, man.

By an hour later, the table had totally changed. The big money all left, and there were maybe three or four of the original members still there, and all had stacks basically comparable to mine. The table then filled up with short stack after short stack, so the whole texture changed after that. There was no more deep stack poker, as half the table was pot committed anyway after any significant action took place. (Astoundingly, even that wasn't enough to get me much action. I remember one hand where I flopped two pair. I checked the flop, and a short stack behind me bet out with maybe a quarter of his stack. I check-raised him, and he folded to me. Whatever.) Anyway. Most of my headway was taking down pots basically with aggression against similar stacks to mine. I thought of it a lot as bluffing, but I was actually probably bluffing with the best hand -- a common theme for me was holding medium to small pocket pair and being able to take it down with a flop bet on a basically uninteresting flop. Ho hum, but at least it's money.

Let me regale you with my cooler story. This took place when there was still massive money at the table. I limped early with ace-middle suited in diamonds, and like six or seven limpers saw the flop. I flopped the nut flush! I led out with a bet of $12. Interloper on my immediate left flat calls, and Villain one seat down raises it to $40 straight. Everyone folds, I call, Interloper folds. The turn pairs the board. I check, Villain bets $40, I check-raise to $100, he jams for $130 more. Suck, suck, suck.

So, let's check it out. There's about ~~$300~~ $430 in the pot, and I'm facing $130 in action. I flopped the nuts, but that turn card was pretty freakin' scary. I'm getting better than 2 3 to 1 pot odds to make the call. What's sad about this is that if I'm behind, I have no redraw. If the dude has a 5 but not a boat, he does have a redraw. My best shot is him having a lower flush or worse. In the end, I called. Unfortunately he had flopped bottom two and boated on the turn with his stupid five-deuce soooooted. Bummer. [EDIT: I posted this situation as a question to the poker group, and it was pointed out to me there by bastard that I calculated the pot odds incorrectly. So I corrected them there and here.]

I don't think it's a big mistake to call there, but there's strong arguments to be made for folding. Something that (possibly) changed the dynamic in that hand was that like four or five hands previously, I took a pot off him on the flop when I check-raised him (coincidentally, he had bet $40 and I had check-raised to $100, just like this hand). Because of that, I gave slightly heavier weight to the possibility that he might have thought I was making a move and didn't credit me with a strong hand. Without that dynamic, it becomes a little harder to argue for me to call his three-bet jam. Here's what I'm thinking: if he gives me due credit for my check-raise on the flop, what can he be jamming with on the turn that's good news for me? I know he can't have the nut flush, because I have it. Does he jam like that with a non-nut flush when I check-raised a three-flush and pair on the board? Unlikely. Likewise, something like a 5 with a flush redraw is unlikely. A 5 with the ace of diamonds? Sure, but he doesn't have that. A 5 with the king of diamonds? Does that warrant a jam there? Maybe, maybe not. So thinking along those lines, if he credits me with a monster, his three-bet jam makes my flush look pretty paltry on that paired board. Can I fold the nut flush in that spot? Getting 2.3 to 1 on my money? Still not sure. Thoughts welcome.

[For the record, besides me giving greater weight to the possibility that he thought I was stealing, I had one other reason to call. When I was pondering whether he could have boated or not, I pictured what would have happened if I had showed more aggression on the flop. Assuming he didn't drop out (and I don't think he would have), I can only figure that all our money was going in anyway, since more flop action would have probably committed me to the pot. I therefore figured that, had the action gone differently in the hand, all my chips would have been at risk, anyway, so I figured making the turn call certainly couldn't have been any worse than how the hand would have played out with different action. I'm not really sure whether that's valid thinking or not, but I have to admit, it really doesn't feel like it. ;) ]

Anyway. So I blew through something like $270 on that hand. That's basically the reason I was happy to have "only" booked a loss of $100 tonight. My other big loss was holding QQ against AA, and I dropped something like $110 or $115 on that one.

That was actually a halfway interesting hand, too. I'm UTG+1, and I raise to $12 after a UTG limp. There are three more callers, one right behind me, and two in late position. The blinds fold, and UTG re-raises $35 on top. UTG's got something like $80 behind, but everybody else has like in the $150-$200 range. (I've got $200+, so I've got everyone covered.) Since I'd really rather not take on a five-way, three-bet pot holding QQ in EP (which I'm sure is what would have happened had I flat called), I just jammed to isolate. If I'm behind, I'm behind. If I'm racing AK, I'm taking on a short stack and assuming all the others fold, there'll be like $36 dead money to pad my pot odds. All the interlopers folded, and short stack of course calls with AA. No help on the board, and I pay him off.

So what do you think. Is a jam imprudent in that spot? At the time of the decision, I'm facing action of $35 with a pot of about $60 and three players left to act behind me. If I flat call, assuming no re-raise behind me, I'm basically looking for a set, since short-stack will surely auto-jam the flop and I basically face the same decision. Let's say all three of them call behind me. That gives me an expected pot of about $200 against my action of $35. That's about 5.7 to 1, a little bit short of the odds I'd want to hunt a set. But, wait, what about implied odds? I really think it's reasonable to assume that I can't count on implied odds from any of the interlopers, but remember that I am expecting short-stack to jam it on the flop. So let's say I can count on his $80 going on on the flop. If I hit my set, I stand to win, say, $280 against my current $35, so that's like 8 to 1. That's a bit better for looking for a set. (I approximate the odds of flopping a set at about 7 to 1 against.)

Contrast with the isolation move. For simplicity's sake, let's assume that if I re-jam, all the interlopers fold and short-stack calls. That's me putting up, say $115 for $175, which is about 1.5 to 1. Do I have that kind of equity against his possible range? This is where knowing your man comes in handy. This is a short-stack limp-re-raise-jam from UTG. Let's go super-tight and give him AA, KK, or AK. PokerStove gives me 40% equity in that case. That's the moral equivalent of a break-even play. (1.5 to 1 pot odds with 40% equity = 0 EV.) If I take out AK from his range, of course I'm eating dirt. But for every step that Villain's range loosens, my EV grows. (Just adding JJ to his range bumps my equity to 47%.)

So let's try to compare apples to apples. If everything goes perfectly on the flat-call play, it will be like this: I call, and the three interlopers call. On any flop, UTG/short stack jams it. If I hit a set, I re-jam, and all interlopers fold. If I don't hit a set, I fold. This setup gives me about $280 to $35 on about a 12% shot, for EV of, wait for it, about +$2.80. If everything goes perfectly on the isolation play, I will jam short-stack's re-raise, all the interlopers fold, short-stack calls, and we take it to the river. If I give him aces, kings, or AK, my equity is about 40%, and I'm getting $175 to my $115 for pot odds, for EV of +$1. Yes, one whole dollar.

So the difference in EV is less than two bucks, with flat-calling being a nominal favorite. However, think about this: if anything deviates from the ideal situation in the flat-call scenario, things go to shit. If one or more interlopers fold, my pot odds on the call are crap. If one or more interlopers raises (especially with a jam), I have a much harder decision to make, and probably have to fold (remember that only the short stack is short; the other people can take a big ol' chunk out of your stack if they win). Also, let's not ignore the small but still present possibility if hitting a set and losing. Ouch. :) On the flip side, if the UTG short stack is in any way looser than we give him credit for, then isolation is a much better play. Again, just as an example, let's add QQ and JJ to his range, giving us 47% equity instead of 40%. In that case, our EV on the isolation move is now a whopping $21.30. Huge improvement! (For the sake of completeness, check out if you give UTG only aces or kings: you have 18% equity. EV is now -$62.80. Owie.)

So really it comes down to knowing your man. As UTG's range gets looser, isolation is the higher EV play. As UTG's range gets tighter, the flat-call play becomes a winner. As we saw, though, if we give UTG a range of AA, KK, or AK, the difference between flat-calling, isolating, and folding is very small -- less than $3 difference of EV (folding is 0 EV). Given the number of things that can go wrong with the flat-calling play, though, I like the isolation play. Also of mild interest: let's say we can definitely give UTG a range of only AA or KK. Clearly, isolation is a terrible play. Flat-calling remains slightly +EV, though, but I honestly don't think even that warrants the move. The whole not-even-three-dollars of equity you get from the flat call move, IMO, doesn't make up for all the shit that can go wrong. Given that knowledge, I'd give up that tiny EV and just fold and save myself the heartache. :)

Anyway, so there you go. It wasn't too long after the QQ vs. AA hand that I caught myself playing (a) looser than usual, and (b) dumb, so I decide to bail. Here's the hand that brought it home for me: I was on the button, and five or six people limp in. The cut-off, the guy to my immediate right (who was the AA in the QQ vs. AA hand) raises it to $15 straight. For reasons as yet unclear to me, but that probably have something to do with something that rhymes with "silt," I flat call on the button with K2 suited in spades. One of the limpers (in mid-late position) also calls the raise, and the rest fold. As we're preparing for the flop, I am chanting to myself, "You want spades, you do not want a king. You want spades, you do not want a king." So, of course, the flop comes king-rag-rag rainbow. Dammit! Interloper checks, Villain bets $50, leaving himself like $65 behind. Interloper has maybe $200, I've got them both covered. I think, I think, I think. What the hell am I thinking about? I still don't know. I just know I spent that time convincing myself that my king might be good. And, honestly, it might have been, in some bizarre universe where a short-stack bluffs with a pot-size bet that commits him to the pot. :P I decide, finally, that it might be good, and I raise to isolate, making it $150 to go. Interloper folds, cut-off calls with his short stack. I have top pair/no kicker, he has top pair/better kicker with KJ. Son of a bitch! Anyway. Turn pairs the middle flop card, and the river brings a beautiful ace, earning me a chopped pot: kings up with the ace kicker on the board in play! Catching a runner-runner save from my own folly, it was pretty much then that I decided it was time to go.

More bad moves

2008-09-20T20:25:07Z

Just as an addendum to the commentary on last night's session, I forgot to talk about the gem of my donkey hands.

As background, there was this guy on my immediate left who was a pain in my ass for most of the session by being big stack and an aggressive player and on my immediate left, which doesn't make for a fun time. I knew he was aggressive, though, so I was basically always looking for opportunities to play back at him and maybe take down the odd loose money here and there. One of this guy's favorite moves was making a significant raise out of the big blind against many limpers, which would allow him to often take down the pot right there, or sometimes he'd get it heads-up and take it down with a flop bet. I knew that for many of these hands he couldn't have had the monster he was representing, so I figured that would be a good time to work on him. It also meant, though, that when he did this, I was the small blind, so I tended to notice this more when I had completed the small blind after a bunch of limpers, and then he would pop it. So one time in the small blind, I figured that this would be the time to play back at him. I had some garbage king-rag or something, and I completed, and as expected, he popped it. It folded around to me, and I re-raised him. He had gone to $15 on top, so I re-raised him $35 more. He answered by re-raising me $100 more. Crap! I actually tanked on the hand.

Sure, he was a frequent pre-flop raiser, and I thought there was a possibility he was re-stealing on me, and I tell you, I was actually fairly close to jamming on him. But I thought about it and thought about it, and finally I lost my nerve and folded. See...although he would habitually make this pre-flop move, he was also not a habitual three-bettor. Between that and the fact that I felt he would actually respect my raise if it came down to it, I decided that I might actually be behind in this case. When I folded, he showed down pocket aces! Good LORD. Thank God I didn't jam it. :)

Anyway. So that's the kind of relationship I had with this guy when this hand happened. I was in the cutoff and limped behind several limpers with AT off. The guy on my left, aggressive guy, was the button, and made it $10 to go. Four of the limpers called him, so I called. This was somewhat questionable, but I honestly thought I was ahead of the guy, and I had position on everyone else, so I just wanted to see what the flop brought. As it turns out, it brought nothing. :) It was an 8-high, ragged rainbow, and it checked around to him. He bet out $20. The pot is like $60, and this was low enough on his scale that I figured it was a feeler. It folded around to me, so it left the two of us heads-up. I called it, fully intended to do a delayed steal; I really figured I could blast this guy out of the pot on the turn. The turn, however, brought an ace, which was actually a really good card for me. I checked again, this time not really intending to blow him out of the pot, but to go for value. In situations like these, I like to switch to check-calling, because his aggression usually gets the money in, while he would fold to my bets. After I checked the turn, he bet $40. I called it, making some table talk about him putting the pressure on me. The river brought a second 8, pairing the flop's high card. I bet out $50.

This may take some explanation. There were basically two reasons for this. One, I was sure the river 8 would be scary for him, as he may well put me on an 8. (We had a similar exchange earlier where I was check-calling him with top pair and I took down the pot at showdown.) Because it was scary, I figured he'd check behind on the river if I checked, so I basically bet it for value. Two, I also wanted to represent an 8 just in case he actually had a strong ace, and maybe he'd lay it down if he did put me on an 8. In retrospect, it probably wasn't a big enough bet to force a laydown, but I wanted it to look like a value bet, and, in any case, it basically was a value bet. He paused a bit, looked at his cards again...and then raises me another $50. What the hell?

So up until then, I figured I was good; if not the whole time, then at least on the turn. Now I had to rethink that. Clearly he didn't now put me on an 8. Fair enough, I didn't have the 8, and I was making a move by trying to represent that. So he figured that much out. But did he put me on an ace? That was the big question. If yes, he had a big ace. If no, maybe he had a pocket pair (or worse?) and was just trying to blow me off my hand? In the end, I figured it would be really hard for him to put me on an ace unless I had like second or bottom pair on the flop and hit my kicker on the turn and got counterfeited on the river. (And as an aside, if this was the case, I would never have been so passive on the turn.) Anyhoo. Since I couldn't see him putting me on an ace, I figured it was probably a move, and I had good enough pot odds to call, so I called.

He turned over Js8s. So, yes, he had pre-flop raised with a substandard hand. He had flopped top pair, though, I caught my overcard on the turn, and then he rivered trips! We laughed about that one, he and I. We both knew I never put him on an 8.

Okay, so...I'm the first to admit that his pre-flop raise threw me off, but I never, ever, considered he had an 8. I basically gave him either a big ace or a pocket pair. But...hang on a second. Doesn't that go against my thought process this whole time, that he was raising pre-flop with a substandard hand? I guess I should have thought about him having an 8, but I didn't. All things considered, even if I had thought about it, I'm not sure I would have made the river fold anyway, but it irks me that I didn't think about it. Bummer.

So, as sad as that hand turned out, it also feels like I misplayed it from beginning to end. It's very rare that I try this kind of delayed steal move, and so I was sort of thrown for a loop when I actually improved on the turn when I expected it to be a blank. :) Because of that, I kind of switched strategies in mid-stream, which really threw me off-kilter. And then, I found his behavior so odd on the river that I didn't know which way was up. :) While each step of the way, I had reasons for how I acted, when you look at the hand as a whole, it really looks like crap. :) Even now, I'm unsure as how I could have handled it better; I'm not even sure if folding pre-flop was the right move. Almost certainly I should have check-raised the turn when I had the chance and probably taken it down right there. I guess I just never imagined that once I hit on the turn that he could manage to river me, and I assumed I could have gotten one more bet out of him on the river. Maybe that wasn't such a hot plan after all. :) In any case, that hand really bugged me for how bad it looked.

All the wrong moves

2008-09-20T10:49:07Z

Hello again, poker people. Of late, poker has fallen way by the wayside in my life, so I decided recently that it was time to do something about that. I'm going to try to hit the tables a lot more regularly in the near future, and I'd also like to get more blog posts going on a per-session basis. This is mostly just a notes-to-self kinda thing; I find I don't really keep game notes any more, so I'm hoping this can help me fill in those gaps as I try to get back in the game.

Also, I know my last post was a "What Would You Do?" setup and I never came back with answers or analysis. I may or may not get back to that; as time has passed, it seems to have gotten a lot less interesting. ;) At any rate, none of that will be showing up in this post. So there.

Anyway. So today I had a short day at work, so I decided what better way to kick-start my poker surge than to hit the tables when I actually should be at my job. :) I rushed home, changed clothes, and headed right back out to the casino for a little 1/2 NLHE.

I booked a losing session tonight, which is pretty much the long and short of it.

I'm moved, as I tend to be in these situations, to recap some of my bad play. By far my biggest gaff tonight was a horrendously ill-advised bluff. Standard raises at the table were generally in the 10-12 range, though raises as low as 7 and as high as 16 weren't unheard of. I opened for 10 (my standard at this point) UTG with 66. I got called in one place by a middle position guy who was relatively new to the table, though I've definitely played with him before. He's decent; nothing really stands out to me about him, but I generally respect his play. So we're heads-up, he's got position, my stack is maybe $400 or $450, his stack is around $300. The flop comes AAK. Given that I was the pre-flop raiser UTG, I automatically take a stab here, especially on a flop like this. I bet $15 into the pot of $20. He min-raises me to $30. At this point in the session, I've already picked up that a lot of people have pegged me as an automatic c-bettor, so I thought he might be playing back at me just to see if I've actually got the goods. I re-raise him $60 more to see if I can take it down right there. He calls. At this point in the hand, there is no possible way I'm good here. I know this. But he doesn't know this. The turn is a blank, and I decide to take one last jab at the pot, which is really worth winning at this point. :) I fire out $100 on the turn. He thinks about it, but he puts the chips in for the call. I wait for the miracle 6 on the river, which fails to show (though, cruelly, it was a 9, and for a split second I thought I hit it). The river goes check-check, and he shows AJ for the win.

The flop three-bet was probably reckless on my part. It wasn't completely unreasonable that he was making a play at me with air, but it wasn't that likely. At that point, things hadn't escalated much and I still could have just let it go. I would have lost the continuation bet, but big deal. Continuation bets just get lost sometimes; that's what they're there for. (My judgment was probably fouled by the fact that I had made basically the same move earlier against a different player, and it had worked.) Anyway. If the three-bet on the flop was reckless, then betting the turn after he called the three-bet on the flop was downright irresponsible. Once he calls that flop re-raise, I can't put him on anything that he'll fold on the turn. Not to a bet like that, anyway. After the flop action, I pretty much have to put him on an ace. At that point the only possible way for me to win is to jam the turn and pray he gives me AK or KK and can make that kind of giant laydown. There is basically no way this is going to happen, not to mention that if I did actually have AK or KK, I'm never jamming that turn. In fact, I'm doing exactly what I did, betting like half the pot. (Which, conveniently, also was about half his stack.) The way it went down, though, it was just pure madness.

As a footnote, though, he was very worried about AK, and three or four other players, plus the guy's girlfriend who was sweating him, all thought I actually did have AK, so I guess I partially sold it. All-in-all, though, I'm leaning toward thinking that the move was just overall bad. Even if I can make someone believe I've got AK, once the pot is so big after the flop betting (like $200), I think the urge to crying call is just too strong for someone to lay that bad boy down on the turn. Wasted money. I knew all I needed to know on the flop. Even if I couldn't leave the min-raise alone, his call should have been enough that I shouldn't have fired a second barrel on the turn. Ah, well.

Another misplay was earlier on in the session. I was playing 64 out of a blind in a limped pot, maybe five-way. The flop came J85 rainbow, so I flop a gutshot. I checked, and it checked around to a pretty predictable player who bet out maybe $10 or so. I was feeling cheeky on this one, and I figured high implied odds if my gutshot came, so I called it. One other person called. The turn spiked my 7, so I hit my straight. I checked, going for the check-raise, but check-checked behind me. Dammit! The river comes a 9. Double dammit! Now I lose to a bare ten; the board is J8579. I check again, the interloper checks, and the flop better fires out $30 (about $40 in the pot). I tank for a little while and mumble a lot. I tell him, (not so) jokingly, that I've played this hand terribly. Finally I call. Interloper folds. I'm fearing the flop bettor had like JT, but he just says, "Good call," and mucks. Guess he was just taking a shot or something. I win!

But I shouldn't be rewarded for that kind of behavior, frankly. Okay, so...first off is the questionable flop call chasing a gutshot. Definitely not the brightest move, but not the worst ever. I like gutshots more and more these days, especially raggedy ones, mostly for their invisibility and commensurate higher implied odds. Something important about gutshots, though, is that if you're chasing them, you're much better off if they're the nuts when they hit. I completely failed to factor T9 into my thought process. A flopped open-ender that's drawing to a higher straight than mine, which turns my implied odds into implied "Hey, I think I just lost all my chips." So that was messed up. Checking the turn made a lot of sense to me at the time. I failed to see how a 7 could scare anyone, once again completely ignorant of the possibility of T9, which someone else obviously was thinking about. All things considered, I'm not really sure if it's better to check or bet in that spot, given what I was thinking at the time about the hand. It's also hard to say what I'd want to do if I had been thinking about T9, because I'm not even sure I would have called on the flop if I had thought about T9. The river, though, was pretty poor all around, I think. Everybody checked on the turn, so a river bet should have been more or less automatic, except that the river brought pretty much the scariest card I could have seen. I checked because I was worried that the ten was out against me. And then I...called because I hoped it wasn't? I dunno...the whole thing just seems kind of poor. Also flat calling with the interloper still to act behind me may not have been the smartest move. If he had raised, I probably would have had to fold.

I dunno. Now that I'm going over it again, I'm not sure it was so bad. Like who would be holding what that could beat me with the betting pattern like that? At the time I was facing the river bet, I was worried about the flop bettor having JT, but does JT check behind on the turn? I guess maybe it does. TT is a strong contender. And there's always the outside chance of the flop bet just being some random bluff that held a T. As things turned out, it probably went the best it could for me, considering. Probably no one was strong enough to call the turn, and my river check induced a bluff, but all of that was just pure, dumb luck. That is not a technique that I would like to reuse. I'm not unhappy with my turn check, really; I'm just unhappy that it got checked behind. And this hand is really only noteworthy because the river came as it did; there are so few river cards that scare me, I really don't mind chancing giving out a free card. I'm probably more sore about not thinking about T9 when I called on the flop.

Well, there's probably more that can be noted, but my brain is shutting down, and I have to get to sleep. I'll leave off with a funny story in which I lose a shitload of money, and possibly rightly so.

I limped in on the button with 85 off after like seven other limpers. I was basically goaded into it by the dealer. ;) Anyway, the flop came JJ6, two-suited. It checks around to me, and for basically no other reason than I had zero prospects, I took a shot at the pot. I think I went $15, which was about pot-size. I got one caller, an early/mid limper. The turn came an offsuit 4. My caller checked to me. I really didn't give this guy a jack, so I give him a 6 or a flush draw. Well, if it's a 6, maybe he'll ditch it, and if it's a draw, maybe he'll miss it, so I bet again, this time $30. He thinks a beat, then calls. Hmm. The river, miraculously, brings a 7, and I've made a runner-runner gutshot straight. Nice! Now I do hope he has a jack. :) He surprises me by betting out $50. I can't see how he possibly hit the river, so I ponder the possibility of pocket sixes or fours, but a jack seems the most likely holding. He's got maybe $70 or so behind, so I put him all in (I had him covered by a bit over a hundred, and after his river bet there's like $150 in the pot). He calls. "Whatcha got, kid?" the dealer asks me. I say, "This was so dirty. I hit a straight." I table my 85, showing my runner-runner straight. The other guy says, "This was even more dirty," and shows pocket sevens, for the rivered two-outter full house.

Oh. My. God.

I bluffed and I bluffed and I hit a runner-runner cooler. Bad luck? Or just desserts? :)

'Til next time, everybody. Peace!

What would you do? -- Draws and sidepots.

2008-06-11T19:57:22Z

Hello again, everybody. I took a bit of a break from the tables after my last post, although in the past couple weeks I've logged a few sessions, but just haven't gotten around to blogging about them. Mostly because nothing interesting happened. :) But I had an interesting hand last night that I'm still sort of taking apart in my head, so I thought I'd post an open question and see what y'all think. The setup is, as usual, 1/2 no-limit hold 'em.

Blinds are posted, and UTG blind raises to $6. (The rest of the world calls this a straddle. One of the many peculiarities of Atlantic City poker is that there is no straddle, in that blind raises are just raises: you get no option to re-raise yourself.) You're UTG+3, and it folds to you, and you flat call with 6h5h. Several people call behind you. We saw the flop maybe four or five handed, I can't remember. So between the unspecified number of callers, blinds, and rake, I'm calling the pot $25. The flop comes out 8h6d3h, giving you middle pair, flush draw, and some backdoor straight possibilities. UTG (the blind raiser, remember), bets out $13. You flat call, deciding to see how this plays out, since most of the action is behind you. A short-ish stack behind you moves all-in for $64 on top. It folds around to UTG. He gives it just a little thought, but then calls. It's apparent he thinks this is a stronger move than it actually is. He very vocally does not expect you to stay in the pot (thanks to your small acting job hesitating before calling his flop bet).

Okay. So here are the vital statistics.

Short stack is just a hair short of decent as a player, but he's not terrible. He has been known to overvalue his hands, but he's nothing close to maniacal. You give him at least top pair. Overpair is possible, but not extremely likely, since he'd probably re-raise pre-flop. If, if, he's got an overpair, it's probably nines, maybe tens; anything higher he'd reraise. Most likely he's got a big eight. Or maybe even not so big an 8. But at the end of the day, you're likely to have all your flush and pair-plus outs against him (trip up or hit your kicker -- call it 14 outs; against only him, it's an auto-call).

UTG is obnoxious, but pretty skilled post-flop, and tends to be careful. More careful than his persona would suggest, anyway. He also marries himself to his blind-raised hands, though (as you've seen in the past), so it's very hard to nail down his range. He's not stupid about it, but he's more loose, say. He's making a point of talking up his hand to the short-stack, and he really seems to want you out of the pot. (Basically, as you contemplate, you get the feeling that he's regretting calling instead of jamming; he just assumed you were going to fold.) You suspect he is not strong, but you don't know if that just means weak or drawing.

The numbers: The pot is currently $192. You're facing action of $64 to call. You've got a total of $171 behind, and UTG just has you slightly covered (which is to say, if one of you stacks the other, the loser will be effectively felted).

The situation: You feel you are behind short stack for sure, but with plenty of outs. You're not sure about UTG, but there's a good shot that the situation is the same with him. The big worry is that he's got a better flush draw than you. Ironically, though, if that's the case, that puts you ahead of him currently, though his equity would be huge, as he's not only drawing to a better flush, but also has at least an overcard. Remember that with short-stack all-in, any action beyond you calling this current bet is going to be in a side-pot with UTG.

What do you do?

Analysis and results next time. Happy pokering, everybody!

Short and sweet

2008-04-22T14:57:28Z

Contrary to the usual routine, I skipped any poker-playing on Sunday, but I managed to make it to the tables for a few hours on Monday. I was pretty much planning to go anyway, but the deal was sealed when Momz ended up coming to town and beating me to the casino, so...there you go. Anyway, I'm happy to report that the losing streak has ended, and I closed out Monday's session booking a pretty decent win. Yay! Nothing really spectacular or specific to report. I just played pretty solid, caught decent hands, and caught some opponents willing to pay. Nothing magical about that. :) I had AK actually hit flops a couple times, which was amazing. I think I caught all of one whole set this session (jacks), but didn't get any action anyway, so whatever. Nothing particularly sneaky or wily went on; it was just a straight-up good run.

Two things to add.

One: we knew this already, but this session just drove it home once again -- stack size is so important. The stakes are 1/2, and I bought in for the max of $300. The two biggest stacks at the table when I sat down only barely had me covered. This is so much easier of a lineup than that previous session where I came in and half the people had upward of a grand in front of them. A lot of the money I made came from short stacks being committed to pots when I had them dominated. That's the kind of thing that happens when you play short-stacked; you find yourself in situations where you just can't fold, even though you should. Even better, people would rebuy short. This guy would bust, and buy back in for $70. That guy, $100. Bust again. Repeat. Those are my favorite kinds of opponents. Playing short-stacked has one thing going for it: it makes your decisions a lot easier, because you commit to a pot so much faster. But the downside of that is that, as your opponent, it makes my decisions easier, too. And a mistake for you is a lot more damaging than a mistake for me.

Two: Today marked the beginning of a new experiment for me in bet sizing. I've been reading No Limit Hold 'Em: Theory and Practice by Sklansky and Miller. Sklansky is, well, Sklansky. Miller has been my latest favorite since Small Stakes Hold 'Em, which I found a fantastic aid back during the heyday of my limit career. I've been absorbing a lot of new tactical tidbits from this book, especially in the arena of bet sizing, and I've been made to wonder (once again, as I've mused in this blog before) if I'm really betting enough. Based on the results of Monday's experiment, I'd like to say: probably not. Previously I'd been sitting pretty low in the bet size ranges (postflop, I mean), mostly as an artifact of early training when was more rooted in, well, teachings with different roots. My previous style would hold, for example, with a flop bet of around 2/3 to 3/4 the pot as standard. This make sense under certain contexts. First, it makes sense heads-up, which was my own fault for misapplying in a multiway situation. But beyond that, it also takes into account a balanced bluffing strategy and a certain degree of postflop tightness among your opponents. Basically it assumes that chips are worth something to your opponents, such as they would in, say, a tournament. However, we're talking a low-stakes cash game. This is a situation in which pot size on the flop is often meager compared to stack size, and you also tend to face a lot of unnecessary postflop loose-passiveness. That is a time where you want (1) less bluffing, and (2) more value betting, and that is a time where you want bigger bets. So I ramped up my flop bets to be closer to pot-sized, and for this particular session, anyway, the results have been pretty good. Not just for value, either, but also for a cascading effect on other people's action.

Wow, even I am not sure what I just said. :) Okay...it's like this. A real example from that session: I had 96o in the big blind. We had eight limpers see a flop of 765. I have middle pair and a gutshot (and an over, but that is one dangerous overcard if I hit my second pair). Mediocre at best. Pot is $16, and I bet $15. A calling station calls it behind me, and then a guy in late-middle pops it to $65. I don't know about you, but I insta-fold. Later on the guy said he'd flopped a straight, and I believe him (the flop was two-suited, so he was looking to protect it). Contrast that to how it might have gone previously. If I bet out $10 there instead of $15, the raise probably only goes to like $30 or $40. I'm much more likely to call in that spot, getting a cheaper price relative to stack size, and so getting better implied odds on my admittedly-still-pretty-crappy draw. So even spending more to make it easier to get out of hands seems to work out well; that wasn't even close to the only time I had bet-folded that day, and in some cases I feel like I might have bet-called if the bet sizes had been smaller. So that's another nice side-effect of bigger flop bets.

Anyway. This is all rather vague and still largely experimental anyway. Just something I wanted to jot down before I forgot it. Stack size important. Bet size important. Onward!

What would you do? - conclusion

2008-04-20T23:44:18Z

In this post I'd like to wrap up the "What Would You Do?" section from this post, so we can all move on with our lives. :) If you missed that post, you can check it out now, if you'd like, before we move on to the analysis. If you don't want to, that's fine. I'll recap:

This is 1/2 NLHE. A tight player has opened with an early pre-flop raise, but he's gotten a bunch of cold-callers, and we've called out of the big blind with 9s7s, getting better than 6 to 1 on our money and closing the action. We see a six-way flop of 976 with two hearts and a club, flopping top two on a dangerous board. We check, hoping to check-raise. (For the time being, let's ignore the dubiousness of that move.) Initially failing to notice that the tight PFR was short-stacked, this is now brought to our attention as he jams his remaining $60 into a pot of $70. It folds to one of many monster stacks at the table, who re-jams for about eight million. The similarly-sized monster stacks behind him fold, and it folds around to us. We've got about $240 behind.

Flop: 976, two hearts and a club
Our holding; 97 for top two.
UTG holding: probably a strong pre-flop holding, probably an overpair.
Monster stack holding: ???
Decision: Call all-in $240 for a pot of $370 or $60 for $250 plus $180 for an even-money side pot?

What would you do?

Bare bones
For the executive summary, let's strip things down as much as possible, since we're trying to make this decision at the table and don't really have time to break everything down into fine details. The current decision is laying us odds of 370 to 240, or a little better than 1.5 to 1 (or 3 to 2). For us to break even on this call, we need about 40% pot equity. Do we have it?

First off, let's talk about a shortcut we've already taken. To make things easier, I'm working off the assumption that we are either going to win or lose this pot completely. That is, I'm thinking in terms of either beating both opponents or neither one. Under the circumstances, this doesn't seem like too broad an assumption. In order to involve the side-pot math in our calculations, we've got to be in a situation where we can beat the monster stack, but not the short stack. While this is certainly feasible, it doesn't seem that likely. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking probably the most likely scenario in that case is short-stack flopping a set and monster stack holding an overpair (or a draw). While not totally off the wall, I'm still comfortable not thinking too hard about that. I'm confident in short-stack holding an overpair, and though he's slightly stronger with, say, AhKh, we're still decently ahead of short-stack's likely holdings. Our big concern here is the monster stack's holdings. So, in the end, I'm considering both of them as a single opponent that we have to beat collectively.

When trying to make quick decisions like this, I like to head out to the extreme ends of the curve just to see how good or bad we are. Not all the way out, but far enough that I get an idea of the boundaries.

First the good: Probably the best scenario I could cook up for us, assuming that neither opponent is holding a big draw, is that they both have an overpair to the board. Actually, the very best in the overpair-overpair scenario is that they have the same overpair, thereby holding each other's outs. That doesn't seem altogether too likely, though. :) So let's give one person kings and one person queens, say. We end up with about 60% pot equity in that scenario. That's a nice overlay and an easy call. (For the curious, if we give them both the same overpair, our pot equity is like 75%.)

Now the bad: I'm sticking with my read of UTG holding an overpair. The worst overpair for him to be holding (from our point of view), is pocket tens, since he not only has the overpair outs, but also a gutshot. Worst news for us from monster stack would be a set or a made straight. Again, the very worst in that situation is monster stack holding 99 or 77, since that crushes our hand, while against 66, we can at least match a 9 or 7 and still win. In that world, though, the likeliest set is sixes, because we're holding 97 ourselves. And we've basically got the same outs against 66 or a straight: we've got to fill up. (Though we do slightly better against a straight than a set; an underset still has that one-outter re-draw to hit quads.) Giving short-stack tens and monster stack bottom set or a made straight, our equity drops to around 17%. Not so rosy.

So here we are. If we're ahead the way we want to be, we're like a 3 to 2 favorite. If we're behind like we'd hate to be, we're about a 5 to 1 dog. That's really not a comfortable place to be, as far as I'm concerned. This, to me, is approaching the arena of "a little bit ahead or way behind," which is one of those times you'd prefer to fold if you're keeping an eye on your variance.

What happened
In the heat of battle, though, I grossly overestimated how far I might be ahead. Fighting two overpairs has a suprisingly large number of ways to go wrong. At the table, I was thinking about dodging set draws, which, taking both opponents into account, means I'm dodging four cards (the remaining overcards to match both pairs out against me). In my mind, that meant I was about as far ahead as I was behind, since if I was behind, I similarly had four outs to fill up. Turns out I'm way off-base. :) If I'm fighting overpairs, not only do I have to dodge sets, but I also have to dodge counterfeits! So if the low card pairs, I'm back to holding a four-outter, and I also lose to any running pair (excepting those that give me quads). So I'm actually nowhere near as far ahead as I would be behind. So that unfortunatly escaped my notice.

Back in the real world, after a lot of agonizing, I finally called. Short-stack held pocket queens, and monster stack held 66 for bottom set. Neither person behind improved, and monster stack took it down, becoming even more monstrous. Rebuy. New hand.

Could it have been different?
So questions in the "What could I have done differently?" vein must of course begin with: "Did I play it right?"

One thing I'd like to consider is whether I would have been better off betting out on the flop rather than going for the check-raise. Given the information I had at the time, I think no. My plan, such as it was, was to check-raise the flop, probably going all-in. Given my assumption that I'm ahead, plus the confidence I have that the guy behind me (the PFR) is going to bet the flop (and, in the process, probably commit himself to the pot while behind), makes the flop check-raise an attractive option for me here. Plus it gets me one further benefit, one which actually paid off for me, and which I completely failed to use to its full advantage. I have excellent relative position in this pot.

There are two kinds of position. What they call "absolute position" is what you mostly think of when you think of position: where you are in relation to the button. Later is better. Easy-peasy. "Relative position," though, is where you are the betting order in relation to where likely aggression is going to come from. In this example, it's almost a sure thing that the PFR is going to bet the flop. I'm in the best "relative position" because I'm directly in front of him. That is...since he is the likely aggressor, I get to check to him and then I get to see how everyone else is going to bet before the action gets around to me. This is an advantageous spot, to be sure, and something that's too often overlooked. At least by me.

So going for the check-raise in this spot allowed me to take advantage of my relative position to its fullest. I say it paid off, because I gained a very important clue before the action came back to me and I had to put any money in. That important clue was the monster stack moving all-in and telling me that in order to contest this pot, I would have to do so with everything in front of me. ;) I say I failed to use it to my advantage, because I didn't exercise any caution when this information came my way, and I stacked off anyway. ;)

One final thought on betting out the flop: I doubt the results would have been different, and in fact this probably wouldn't even have been an interesting hand to look at, because the pot odds when I would face my decision would have been much different and more call-inducing. Let's say instead of checking I fired off a bet on the flop. For simplicity, say $60, since it's nearly pot-sized and it's what the PFR has behind. I bet $60, he calls all-in, then monster stack jams. Now intead of 1.5 to 1 on my money, I'm getting like 2.4 to 1! I only need about 30% equity. I can't imagine folding there. So in this particular spot, the argument for betting the flop instead of checking is based on the hope that I can get away from the hand for less money than my whole stack. Turns out not. :) So all in all, I'm not sad about the flop check.

How about the call all-in on the flop? Well, when I first posed the question, I assumed the math would tell me it was a bad call. Turns out that's not really the case. I juggled a lot of numbers around, but at the end of the day, I basically got things to about break even. Here's what I ended up doing:

I gave the short stack PFR a range that included all overpairs to the board, plus the AhKh and AhQh draws. This seems pretty reasonable to me, under the circumstances. Working under the assumption that the monster stack's jam was for protection, I gave him strong made hands. Basically two pair, sets, and straights. I'm ahead of some of those, but most are crushing me. Some are also far less likely than others, but for various reasons. Like...99 is unlikely as far as card frequency goes, but is a likely holding under those conditions. Conversely, 85 off way up on the card frequency list, but doesn't make sense as a cold-calling-a-tight-early-pre-flop-raise kinda hand. So assuming all that kinda stuff would straighten out, my pot equity is basically right at the break-even point, about the same as my pot odds.

The implications of this are pretty big. For one, it makes it not a bad call. A high-variance call, sure, but not a bad call. ;) For two, this is a pretty unfavorable (for us) range to give to the monster stack. As I widen the range to include drawing hands or overpairs (all likely holdings), our pot equity actually goes up, because monster stack's holdings are likelier and likelier to be behind us instead of ahead. So widening monster stack's holdings to include draws actually makes our call make more and more sense. So not too bad!

There is one big flip-side to that coin, though. In hindsight, I'm more and more prone to think that monster stack did not have a drawing hand, and I should have read him for more strength than I did. There are two big clues that point to him having a made hand and not a draw. One, he is not the only monster stack at the table. There are, in fact, several people left to act behind him with comparable stack sizes, and so this is not as safe a move for him to jam here as it would have been if everyone had stack sizes more comparable to, say, mine. Two, we know that a lot of this table has already shown itself to be "fearless" and "unbluffable." Given those conditions, are you going to put your entire monster stack on the line with a drawing hand? Granted, his jam means more to the other monster stacks than my jam would, but even so...that's a lot of money to risk on a draw for a weenie (relative to your stack size) pot. With stacks that deep, both for that player and his opponents, your money from drawing hands doesn't come from isolating small stacks. It comes from hitting draws and getting implied odds from big stacks; so if the monster had a drawing hand, he's far more likely to call in that situation than jam. So I should have read that move more as a made hand that needed protection, rather than a drawing hand that wanted to isolate. I'm not sure that helps so much, to be honest, since I could read that for overpair or set, and overpair is much more likely. But even so...it's something to think about.

At the end of the day, though, even if I don't put monster stack on a draw and only give him made hands, PokerStove tells me my pot equity was enough that the call wasn't a giant mistake. And intuitively, though I'm not surprised that monster stack turned over pocket sixes in that spot, I feel like I wouldn't have been surprised if he turned over pocket tens, either, and my call would have looked like much better of an idea in that case. So in an effort to not think too much about results and think more about theory, it looks like we were all on the right track. Our collective decision to call looked like the right one. Pity we lost the hand, but that's poker. :)

Until next time!

Something a little different

2008-04-16T09:33:03Z

I have just learned, via the Internet, that somehow, somewhere, a starting hand of 75 offsuit is known as the "Filipino Big Slick."

I have absolutely no idea why.

I got to surfing through some other hole card nicknames. My favorite I came across this time around is "the Dick Cheney" (or just "the Cheney") for A2: A bullet and a duck. :) Runner-ups: "the Canadian Hammer" for either 73 or 62...depends on exchange rate.

Anyway. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Scared money is dead money

2008-04-16T08:24:44Z

Okay, slight delay here between the end of this session and the blog post about it, but I jotted down a few notes when things were still fresh, so I'll do what I can. For the executive summary, I can say that this session basically paralleled the last one and it was another big loss. Not as big, but still big. This week's been bad for the old bankroll. But, as I have a bankroll at all, I'm not too bummed about it.

Much like last time, I don't think I was ever up this session. However, because the results of this session and the last one are so similar, I'm going to get more mileage out of contrasting them rather than seeing how they were alike. In this session, unlike the last, I actually got hands that held up, which was a nice change of pace. On the downside, I got zero (successful) bluffing done, but more on that later. I made a very concerted effort to tighten the hell up pre-flop this session. What's interesting to me is that keeping that in the front of my mind pointed something out to me: I was running cold. Like, super-cold. I was getting so few decent starters it was scary. Granted, my range for starters was extremely narrow this session, but even with that, my hole cards were just garbage hand after garbage hand. So it's nice in that my decisions were kept on the easy side, but it makes for a damn boring night. (At one point, I actually was clocking it, since I had so little going on. In my first five hours, I took down two pots. Yikes.)

Plus, just to up the coldness factor, I could not connect with a flop for shit. I decided that's probably where most of my losses come from. Unnecessary pre-flop looseness is one thing, but warranted pre-flop looseness with missed flops is something else. The former can be corrected with better play, while the latter just involves riding out a bad streak. So that accounted for a lot of bleed-off. Probably the second-biggest sinkhole from this session was my handling of mediocre holdings post-flop which I had to spend money on to figure out I was beat. It's basically probe bets and shit like that, and I'm not sad about it in the sense that I think it's anything that needs correcting. It's just...noteworthy as a way I can lose money besides losing at showdown.

An example? Sure. In this one pot, I held pocket nines and limped in MP after a few other limpers. The guy behind me pops it, I think to like $12. I believe we ended up five-way to the flop. (By the way, it was just that kind of table. Standard pre-flop raise was actually a bit higher than usual...like $12 to $17...but that shit would routinely get five or six callers. It was crazy. Shows you just how much missing the flop can cost you in a game like that, though.) Anyway. So we see something like a two-suited, 7-high flop. A guy in front of me bets $20 into a pot of like $60. Now...remember the pre-flop raiser is behind me. I figure I've got a decent chance of being good here, so I raise it to $60. (In hindsight, this was too small -- something else I have to work on.) The idea here is I'm trying to figure out where I'm at. I figure this move blows the PFR off the hand if he's got AK or the like. I also figure an overpair will pop me, so I can jet from that, too. Anyway, the pre-flop raiser behind me pauses for a bit. Then he flat calls. This move is soooo strange for this guy, it's terrifying. He's really pretty solid post-flop, so I figure he's gotta have a monster to smooth call in that spot. Turns out I don't care, actually, since when I made the raise I already know I'm done if I encounter pretty much any action. But it further turned out that my decision was made even easier. It folds around, and then an EP guy check-raises all-in for like a billion dollars. Yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess my hand is garbage at this point. :) The initial flop bettor thinks on it a little while, then finally calls all-in. I insta-fold. PFR behind me insta-calls. What the hell?! Anyway, this is what the deal was: Initial flop bettor had flopped two pair. PFR behind me had pocket deuces (nice pre-flop raise there) and had flopped a set. The check-raise-all-in guy had flopped a combo draw. Here's the even wackier part: all-in guy turns a straight, then rivers a straight flush! Insane. Straight flush and he got to stack two people with it. Crazy times.

Anyway. The point was that I had a few hands like that...hands I put money in the pot with, but it became clear I was beat, and so I had to get out. Again, I don't find anything wrong with that from a tactical standpoint. The question for play adjustment becomes: can I find out where I am for cheaper? The answer is almost certainly yes. One solution probably involves checking instead of betting. ;) But from the standpoint of an overall playing style choice, I'd rather be on the aggressive end of things than not, so I don't mind putting a few bucks in a pot to find out if I'm beat. The important thing is to act on the information I get. :) I feel I do all right in those spots, though, so...whatever. Just gotta take the hits as they come, really.

Another noteworthy facet of this session: I got pocket aces four times! Wow. Even more remarkable, though...they all held up! I find this highly unusual. :) Mostly I didn't get much action on them, though, but believe me, I am perfectly fine with that. Plus it's what I expected, since I had (quite obviously to the others) been playing tight all night. One hand I think was just standard...took it down on an uninteresting flop. Two of the times were scary: One flop of QQT and one flop of KKx. Any resistance on those boards, and I know I'm toast. Thankfully I took 'em down with flop bets, though. The only real payoff hand was toward the end of the night, when I was a little short-stacked. (I'll get back to that short-stacked thing, too, a bit later on.) It folded around to a guy in early-middle who opened it with a raise to $12. It folds around and another guy, new-ish to the table, re-raises to like $35, I think. It folds around to me in the small blind, and I look down at the pocket rockets. I've got something like $150 behind, so I know if I make a decent raise, I'm committing to the pot anyway, so I just jam it in. Initial raiser laughs and folds with mock indignity. Turns out he was trying to win a bounty and had open-raised with The Hammer, seven-deuce. ;) The re-raiser insta-calls. I have aces, he has kings. Frankly, I was running so bad that I was still holding my breath the whole time the board was coming out, even when the flop came three diamonds and I was holding the ace of diamonds. ;) Running queens completed the boards, and I doubled. It was probably my biggest win for the night, honestly.

Ah...the aside about being short-stacked. I am almost never short-stacked. With a max buy-in of $300 at these 1/2 games, I generally reload when I get down to $200 or so. Some opinions dissent, but I share the view that a big stack is an important tool in NLHE, and I aim to be able to use it whenever I can. I have preset conditions for when I don't, though, and this happened to be one of those times. Basically...under certain circumstances, I play without reloading to practice playing short-stacked. I figure this is a good tournament skill to learn. Plus...I don't know, sometimes it just behooves you to practice different things, you know? :) Broadly speaking, it doesn't really make sense to purposefully make yourself short-stacked, though, and this hand is a perfect example of why. I mean look at that hand: AA vs. KK, and the aces held. If I had been fully loaded, that hand would have been twice as profitable for me than it was. Oh, well, though, you do what you can. That's basically the risk you take when you leave yourself short-stacked. Just gotta live with it.

Anyway. So, yeah, except for all those aces, I ran pretty cold. :) Another indicator: I even ran cold on phantom hands. :) You know those hands where you fold pre-flop, but then the board comes out and you would have been holding the nuts? Yeah...I didn't have any of those. ;) My hands were garbage both in and out of the muck. :) So, really, there's just nothing you can do about that. Well, except bluff. And this was not the table for that. I could not pull off a bluff for shit. I think I tried, like, twice, and that shit wasn't happening. One thing was...like half the table was sitting on monster stacks. Let me tell you, when you sit down with $300 and you're facing a lineup where five of your opponents are sitting on between $1,000 and $3,000, you're going to have a tough time of it. Plus these guys were fearless. I didn't even have to waste much of my own money to figure that out; I just had to watch them play. So, yeah, this was not a table for bluffing, my friends. Not at all. So when you can't bluff, you need cards. And when you can't bluff and you don't get cards...well, you sit there and lose. :) That's all there is to it, really, sometimes. And this was one of those times. :)

Heh...one funny footnote to the phantom hands thing. Remember those two pots I won in the first five hours? One of them was because I semi-bluffed a gutshot on the flop, and then actually spiked it on the turn. (I got two callers on the turn, but sadly no river action. These people were weird, man.) Anyway, I made a special mental note to myself after that hand, which went something like, "Remember, this means nothing. Don't go crazy chasing gutshots." Of course, two gutshot draws I folded on the flop ended up hitting on the turn and would have held up nicely. C'est la vie.

So, overall, I was running pretty cold and playing pretty gunshy, and that combination just does not make for a winning night. Not a lot else I can take from this. There are two specific hands I want to go over, though. One was a poor river call, and one was a gigantic blunder on my part, which I will probably present as a "What would you do?" question at the end.

I can't remember the specifics of the pre-flop betting on the first hand, unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure the pot was like $30 or so going to the flop. I called a modest raise from the BB with KcJc. The flop came 876 with two clubs and a diamond. Not too shabby! I checked it, being BB I generally would go for a check-raise in this spot, especially against a pre-flop raiser. It checked all the way around, though, but the turn improved me with the king of diamonds. So the flop now is 876K, two clubs, two diamonds, and I have KJ of clubs. I bet out $15. The guy behind me calls, and everyone else folds, so we're heads-up to the river. It comes an offsuit 9. Not a great card. I check, and the guy behind me bets $25. The wheels start turning.

Board 876K9 with no flush.

Right away, I don't put him on a ten. This was the same guy from the story above with the set of deuces, the one I know is pretty solid post-flop, and I don't think he's calling for a gutshot in that spot, especially with the pot so small and with such bad odds. I realize that a 5 is a possibility...maybe pocket fives? (Oh, just for the record, he could have had anything pre-flop. He had a crazy wide range of hands for pre-flop play.) If he didn't have a 5, I really couldn't figure out what he'd be betting there; I really didn't see him betting a king in that spot; it just wasn't his thing. So, generally, when I can't figure out what someone might be betting, I start to wonder if they're bluffing. He could have a busted draw, just like me. He also might just be taking advantage of the river being a scare card (because it put a four-straight on board). Also my turn bet after a checked flop, followed by a river check, looks pretty bluffy from his point of view...maybe he thinks I don't have a king? In the end, I figured chances were pretty high that he was bluffing, and I was just frustrated at having so many hands that night that I had to abandon, so I decided it was time for a loose river call. I made the call, and he did, indeed, have the 5 for the low end of the straight. Well, at least I was right that he didn't have the ten. :P (Specifically, he had Qd5d: flopped the low end of an open-ender and turned a flush draw.)

When's all said and done, I probably shouldn't have made that call. It really did seem like a good time for a bluff from him...but I really didn't (and still don't) know if he was the type to make a bluff like that. Really, though...what could I beat? By making that call, I basically need him to be holding either a weaker king or total air. (Or a pair lower than king, but I count that as air on that board.) He doesn't call the turn with air, though, so really the only thing that I could beat is a busted draw. $25 to win $85...that's 3.4 to 1, so I have to win like 23% of the time to make that a +EV call. Staring at that percentage...I can't honestly say I give him a bluff there 23% of the time. I should have let that one go. What's sad, though, is that I didn't know it.

My reasoning was deeply flawed on several fronts. Let's start with the king. Yes, I win if he holds a weaker king. Kind of. Look at that board again. I can only beat a kicker of 4, 3, or 2! I chop with a jack, and then any kicker above 4 beats me! T and 5 make straights, 6 through 9 make two pair, and anything higher outkicks me! So much for hoping he has a king! Secondly, yes, I could beat a lower pair, but that board is just screaming for someone to be holding a low two-pair. Yeah, I would have expected more flop or turn action if the two-pair was flopped, but even if the river didn't make a straight, any gapper with a 9 that caught a piece of the flop just outdrew me. Thirdly, and most importantly, there is no reason he couldn't have a ten. I discounted the ten early in my thought process based on the idea that this guy wouldn't have called for a gutshot draw in that spot. I still stand by that rationale. But he could have easily had a ten with something else. Ten in a club flush draw, ten in a diamond flush draw, and any gapper with a ten that caught some of the flop (like T8 or something). The point is that while a bare ten may not have called just for the chance to hit a 9, there's a lot of other hands that would call that do hold a ten. So with this new information, I have to put his range much wider. On the side the beats me, we've got a king that beats me, any of various two pair arrangements (that actually make sense, unlike a lot of other two-pair arrangements), plus a four-straight on board! On the weaker end, we've got K4 or lower, or a busted draw. 3.4 to 1? Yeah...should have folded.

What would you do?
The last hand I'll put up for review, I'll leave as an open question and I'll come back to it next time. The setup is 1/2 NLHE. The table is all loose pre-flop, considered unbluffable post-flop, and about half composed of monstrously giant stacks. You've got about $250.

You're in the big blind. The guy to your left, UTG, opens for a standard-ish raise of $12. A whole bunch of people cold-call, as is the norm at this table. There are five people in when it comes around to you in the BB. You're closing the action, so you elect to call after squeezing 9s7s and getting better than 6 to 1 on your money.

The flop comes 976 with two hearts and a club. You've flopped top two, but on a sick, coordinated board. The pre-flop raiser is pretty tight; he's only raised with (and shown down) strong holdings, and you're sure he'll bet the flop, so you decide to check, going for the check-raise. You check, and, as expected, UTG, the pre-flop raiser, bets.

Unexpectedly, he goes all-in. You failed to notice that he was short-stacked, and only had about $60 behind after he raised pre-flop. So he jams for his $60 into a pot of about $70. You're mentally expecting a lot of folds and cursing his lack of money when something else unexpected happens. It folds around to a guy in middle position who goes all-in for approximately eight million dollars. (That is, he has you covered. By a lot.) Predictably, everyone else folds, even the other guys behind this guy who also have eight-million dollar stacks. Action is to you. You go in the tank.

Flop: 976 with two hearts and a club.
UTG holding: Almost certainly a big pocket pair.
Monster stack holding: ???
You holding: 97 of spades for top two.
Decision: Call for the rest of your stack (about $240) to win $370 (assuming you beat the all-in UTG, else you're getting even money on the side pot)?

What would you do?

Going down!

2008-04-14T08:18:49Z

Hello, again, readers. I know I never got back to that post I intended to make before which would have ended up being about playing defense, but it'll have to wait a little longer. Instead I bring you tales of my latest session from tonight, which was unfortunate and disastrous. In keeping with how I want to be doing things these days, I want to get the entry posted while things are still fresh in my mind. I want to keep it brief though.

In short, it sucked. I booked quite a loss this time around; my biggest in recent memory, for sure, and probably my biggest all year. Two memorable hands were getting aces cracked and getting kings cracked. Two memorable bad moves were a very poor and costly bluff and a questionable use of a trouble hand including a really questionable river call. Even all of those, though, can't explain all my losses, and I hit a couple pretty nice hands this evening, too, and executed some decent bluffs, so honestly I can't say what really went wrong. I don't think I was on my "A" game, I can say that much. I wasn't really super-focused on the game, but I also wasn't the worst player there, by far, so...I don't know. If I had to rate my play overall, I'd say maybe just a shade above mediocre. Maybe C+. But given the vast disconnect between my perception of how things went and the actual loss I booked, it's entirely likely that I was stinking things up tonight and didn't even know it.

Also, before moving on, I just want to note that, as before when I booked a big loss, I was never really up tonight. Maybe at the very beginning of the session...I might have scored a few bucks of profit. I mean that literally, too...like really two or three dollars. But for the rest of the time I was decidedly in the hole. I know that kind of thing may lead to dangerous behavior for me, but I feel I handled things all right. I took breaks when I needed to, and I don't think I did anything incredibly foolhardy. Like I said, though...something was going wrong, and the fact that I really can't put my finger on it says that it's just as likely my own mistakes as anything else. Anyway, though, I'll try and get what I can out of this. Oh, so, yeah, I was down the whole time, which was one thing. The other thing is: at the end, I actually got up before I was felted, which I give myself credit for. I did make a bonehead move right before that, though, unfortunately, but I did make the decision to get up and leave while stuck-but-not-broke, so that's kind of a step forward for me.

Anyway...the specifics... (All 1/2 NLHE, natch.)

This first one is an honest-to-FSM bad beat story, so there's really nothing to be done about that. I just want to tell it, well, because I can. There's maybe one limper to me in early/middle position, and I look down at pocket aces. I make it I think $10 to go. Pretty standard. I got two callers, I think one of the blinds and the early limper. The flop comes JT3 rainbow. The blind bets out $20. The early limper calls. They're both fairly short-stacked at this point, so I make it $100 straight, which has both of them covered. The blind tanks for a significant time, maybe a minute or two, and calls. The early limper surprises me by also calling. The turn comes another ten, which doesn't worry me that much. The river comes another jack, which makes me want to throw up. Guy in the blind has KJ, early limper mucks. Based on the talk that follows, I'm pretty sure he had overs and a gutshot, so that would mean AQ or AK. But why he would limp with that early, I have no idea, so...take that for what it's worth. Anyway, that stung, and I had to take a break after that hand. The guy in the blind had two shots at 5 outs on the flop, but the turn just smokes him, since now hitting his second pair is no good. He had two outs to beat me on the turn, and he spiked it on the river. Sad. (As a small consolation, I got like nine bucks back from the side pot or something, since the interloper had the blind slightly covered. Whee.)

The kings tale is a bit more mellow, although no less disappointing. This was much, much later in the session, and the table had gone a little crazy by this time. I was UTG+1 in this hand. UTG limped, and I raised it to $12 with KK. I get cold-caller after cold-caller behind me, and we go to the flop eight-handed. Jesus Christ! The flop comes Q45 with two spades. I think I had the king of spades. Checks to me, and the pot is nearly $100, so I fire off $75. Folds around, and a guy jams for $110. It folds back around to me, and I'm heads-up. I already feel I'm beat, but no way I can fold, so I call the extra bet and show. Son of a bitch had 5c4c for two pair on the flop, and I never improve, so...good bye, unnecessarily large pot. I feel fine about that hand, though. PokerStove has me as about a 2.4 to 1 dog, and I was getting like 7 to 1, so...whatever, I'll take that bet all day. (Contrast with the above hand, when the guy in the blind took like 2 to 1 on his money for a 4 to 1 shot. Nice.) Still...sucked to lose that one, too.

There's not much to say about the bad bluff, really. I just had complete air and bet a sick amount of money into a super-dangerous board trying to run a guy off his hand, and I had to fold to his jam. The pot (and the player) warranted that kind of behavior, but it was just executed at a bad time and, quite frankly, I probably could have picked a smarter spot to do it. Just bad times all around on that one. Since I had to let it go, I never did find out what the guy had, but I get the distinct feeling that I was bluffing into a monster on that one. Never fun.

The questionable hand went as follows. There's maybe a limp or so, and then in early-middle a pretty solid guy raises to $12. Two people cold call behind him, and I've got AdTd on the button. I can easily credit the initial raiser with a strong hand, so this isn't the smartest time to play this hand (since I'm so easily dominated), but getting 3 to 1 and having position...what the fuck. So I called it, any remaining limpers folded, and we go to the flop four-handed. It comes pretty much how I don't really want it: AJ9 with one diamond. Now I'm in the position of having hit the flop, but having no idea if I'm good. Initial raiser bets $30. Pot is about $50. Fold, fold, and it's to me. Now...this is a severe weakness of mine, but I want to play this hand. So I don't actually think I'm good at this point, but I've got two backdoor draws, so I want to see how the turn treats me. $30 isn't exactly chump change, but it's not an unreasonable bet, and I'm closing the action. The other thing is...if the guy had KK or QQ (or worse, but I don't put him on anything worse), I actually am good, and he'll most likely check-fold the turn if he's beat, so I figure after all is said and done, I should make this call. The turn comes a rag, but a diamond. So I've got my top pair/middle kicker, but now a nut flush draw. Definitely an improvement. Plus position! He fires out $70. Pot is a bit over $100. I figure no way is my ace good in this spot, and I'm not getting pure pot odds to draw. But, and this is a big but, I actually give myself implied odds here, which is not something I normally do with flush draws. I don't count on getting my flushes paid off a lot, just because they're so obvious when they hit. But in this particular case, I don't figure him putting me on runner-runner, because I haven't shown I have an ace to go with it, so I figure I'll get paid if the flush comes. It doesn't, and the river comes a second jack. He thinks for a little while. Then he bets $100.

I insta-call.

Yeah, that's right. No, I don't really know why, either. For some unexplainable reason, I suddenly got the sense that he was overplaying a pocket pair. I didn't even give myself time to think about it...I just went with it. Honestly, I may have been drawn in by his delay on betting the river. Turns out he was wary of me having hit a jack, but for some reason I just suddenly backed off my read of a big ace. Dumb, since that's actually a great board for a big ace to value bet on the river, since another ace would make two pair, but a big kicker would still play. Anyway. I said, "I have an ace, but I don't like my kicker," and I tabled my AT. He, of course, shows AK and takes the pot. I make noises about needing a diamond on the river, but come on...I really should have gotten away from that, I think. I'm not too hard on myself for the flop call, just because I think the reasoning was sound. Not that calling combo-backdoor draws is ever a good idea. It's really not. :) But the combination of that plus I figured the turn would tell me if my ace was good or not made it seem worthwhile to call. And, in fact, the turn did tell me if my ace was good or not. It wasn't. :) But I caught my draw, chased it, and missed. Why I felt compelled to blow money on that river call is beyond me. A costly blunder.

Anyway. That's all that really sticks in my mind from this session, as far as bad stuff goes. For the good stuff, I pulled off a couple nice bluffs, which is always heartening, and I also cashed in pretty decently on some sets, which makes me feel good. In fact...I think I flopped three sets during this session and I'm pretty sure I got paid on all of them. Once by a guy calling me all-in. That particular hand actually made the least sense to me. This guy came in for a late-middle position raise, and I smooth called behind him with pocket tens (I think on the button). We end up going heads-up to a ten-high flop, two-suited with some kind of screwy straight possibilities. He bets out $16 into a pot of like maybe $25 or $30. I make it $50 to go, and he calls. The turn bricks, and he bets out $16 again. That move so befuddled me that I just put him all in, which was like a spectacular overbet. Well...not that spectacular, I guess...with the money he had behind, it was probably a pot-sized bet, maybe around $150 or so. Anyway, he shocks the hell out of me by calling. His hand? JdTd, no diamonds on board. WTF! It was like top pair, medium kicker and I think a gutshot. Bizarre. Anyway, I stacked him on that one. The other sets were less profitable, but still brought in some decent money.

Like I said, I don't really know where the rest of the money went. Probably a good chunk went to unnecessary pre-flop looseness, which is a constant battle I wage with myself, but it's so damn hard when I'm surrounded by people I know I can stack when I hit hands! So, I don't know. Maybe I was playing more loose than usual, but I really don't think so. More likely is that I was playing the same kind of looseness as before, but I wasn't actually hitting anything. That's pretty likely, and it's consistent with my memories of hands I was involved in. I still don't think all that pre-flop looseness could add up to the kind of loss I incurred, but who knows. Maybe it's so.

In any case. I think that's about all the info I can take away from this session, which sadly isn't a lot. I could try to remedy the problem by tightening up pre-flop, which is never really a bad idea. (It just makes it hurt more when the big pocket pairs get cracked, though. ;) ) That one river call was a doozy, though...I probably should try to avoid that kind of shit in the future. Also I had one bad overplay right before I left, but I think that was mostly just tilt-induced, and I won't be doing that again any time soon. Oh...I also blew like $50 or $60 this one time chasing this stupid surprise gutshot thingy, which is great when they hit, but makes me feel like a donkey when they don't. But whatever. Even when you're running bad, still gotta mix it up sometimes. :) The big question for me now, though, is whether I want to head back to the tables soon or not. I probably will, honestly, but for now, I'm ready to kick back and relax and call it a night. Here's to better sessions in the future. Peace!

One last hurrah

2008-04-02T06:07:33Z

Well...that was a short break. :) I was surprised today to find that Momz decided to make a little trip to Atlantic City, so what's a son to do? Hang out with her at the casino and play poker, that's what. :) I went back to rock mode today for the most part, so there's not a lot that's interesting to take away from the session, except for one hand that really sticks out. I find it pretty interesting in and of itself, but it also has the added bonus of calling back to something I blogged about recently, so it came at a pretty opportune time. It goes a little something like this...

I'd been playing at this table for a little while by the time this hand rolled around, so I'd already established a pretty tight image. I won a lot of small pots uncontested, and any time I'd shown down (mostly in the process of busting an all-in short stack), I'd had both decent starters and a decent hand, so for the most part no one was getting out of line with me. This is, as per the norm these days, 1/2 NLHE. It started with UTG opening with a raise to 5.

This was very strange right off the bat. Firstly, standard raise at the table was like 10 to 12. Another popular opening was 7, but it was widely regarded as nothing but a sweetener, as you could expect 6- or 7-way action with that kind of nonsense. More notably, though, it was out of character for this particular player, too, who would normally bring it in for 12, whether that was a hand that merited a raise or not. (That is...he's brought it in for 12 with decent pairs, but also brought it in for 12 with 65 suited. I remember that one vividly because he flopped a straight with it and stacked somebody with pocket queens. ;) ) So I really didn't know what to make of that opening bet, but whatever. Even more strangely, action folded around to me (I guess other people found it as suspicious as I did), and I'm in mid-late position somewhere and look down at AK suited in diamonds. I make it 15 to go, it folds around, UTG calls, and he and I are heads-up.

The flop comes K54 rainbow. He checks, I bet 15. He calls. So far, so good. Turn comes a second 5 (also a second spade, matching the king). UTG checks, and I make it 25. He check-raises me to 75 total, and leaves himself with about 50 behind (I've got a pretty big stack -- 500 and change.) Action is to me. UTG looks really relaxed, which is pretty in-character. I go deep, deep in the tank.

Here's the thing. My gut says I'm no good. I really, really want to be good, but my instincts say no. But this is a really tough decision for me.

First, let's tackle pot odds. Unless he's got complete air (which I don't believe for a second, by the way), I know that if I call, I'm playing for the rest of his stack, which means I fold or jam in this spot. Lets look at the situation. After my turn bet and his check-raise, the pot holds about 160. If I play for the rest of his stack, that's 100 more I have to put in the middle and 50 more he puts in, so I'm effectively getting 210 to 100, or just over 2 to 1. Simple enough.

So what's his range? I feel it's really narrow in this spot. I don't put him on any kind of bluff, simply because he's made a raise that commits him to the pot, but he didn't jam. I know that's not a completely reliable signal, but from this guy, I believe it. He's a thinker. I also don't put him on a semi-bluff. A check-raise semi-bluff just isn't this guy's style, so far as I've seen. He's made some really crazy call-downs, actually, but rarely was he on the aggressive end of crazy moves. So I give him a made hand.

Seriously...the weakest hand I can put him on in this spot is AK. My gut is screaming to me that he has AA. I can just taste it. In a sick-ass universe, he has KK. Equally sick: 55 (and frighteningly appropos to a 5 dollar opening bet, by the way). Slightly less sick but still sick: 44. I honestly can't put him on some random holding with a 5, as I don't see him calling the flop bet. Bringing up the rear (so much so that I didn't think of it until now, actually), maybe he's got 54.

Now. All those hands are really unlikely. But here's the thing: aside from AK, his whole range beats me. And if he isn't beating me, we're chopping. Sound familiar?

Yeah...I ran into this shit last time. Chop or lose...do you call? Remember those pot odds? 2 to 1, right? Not so great-looking now, are they. If I call a chopping hand, I'm getting a whopping even money on my bet. All the rest are losers, and I light an extra hundred bucks on fire for no apparent reason.

My consciousness resurfaces at the table, and I know I've thought about it all I can. I make a speech how this is a bizarre laydown for me, but I have to do it. I show my AK, and I toss it in the muck. He fiddles with his cards a bit, and is wavering on whether to show. Eventually he does: AsKc. I folded the chop.

You know what else? I actually felt good about it. Apparently, too, so did a couple of my fellow players. The guy to my right, who I just met at that session, but who had shown himself to be a really good player, backed me up, saying it was a good laydown. A regular I see a lot in the room told me, "Damn. It takes a really good poker player to make that fold." I joked about it, saying how it looks like I should have called, but deep inside, I felt like I did right. Honestly, at the end of the day, it was that tiny pre-flop raise that did it. I felt that was either a speculative hand or a monster. What it didn't say to me was AK. Turns out I was wrong, but hey. :)

To throw some math at it, let's pare down the range and say he could only have AK or AA, assuming that if he had any of the stronger holdings I considered, he would have slowplayed the turn. There's three unseen aces out there, and two unseen kings. Going solely by card distribution, he's got three ways to hold AA and six ways to hold AK. So 1/3 of the time I'm losing, and 2/3 of the time I'm chopping. Remember my pot odds of 2 to 1? Amazingly, this setup gives me a -EV of a third of the action, so about -$33 EV for me to make that jam against that range. Crazy, right? Now even better: for every hand I add to his range that beats me, though all are crazy unlikely, my EV goes down even more! Again, by card distribution, he's got one way to hold KK, one way to hold 55, and three ways to hold 44. If I add all those to the range, my EV drops to around -$57.

The only way for me to swing my EV back up is to give him holdings that I could beat. The only thing I'd really want to see there is, say, QQ or some sub-king pocket pair like that. A decent semi-bluffing hand really jumps his pot equity up (76 of spades, anybody?). All things considered, I really don't like my spot there. And regardless, that's all just wishful thinking anyway. I really couldn't put him on anything but a made hand in that spot.

Also keep in mind, faithful readers, that I didn't run through any of this math while I was at the table. Really the only coherent thing running through my head at this point was, "Chop or lose...chop or lose...chop or lose..." So in that sense, I feel this blog is helping me out already, just by keeping topics like that in my head. :) The results may not support it, but I genuinely feel I (finally) made the right decision in that situation. And my half-baked card frequency example above shows that I netted the Sklansky Dollars to prove it.

But that's not what's exciting for you guys. What's exciting for you guys is the question I pose to you now: What, if anything, should I have done differently? I already have an idea in mind, and it will, more than likely, be the topic of the next post. But first I'd like to see what thoughts you guys have. Or even if anybody's reading any more. ;) In any case, really time for that break now. :) Peace!

[EDIT: I totally forgot to mention: I rocked this session and booked a nice win. My devastating loss from yesterday is all but forgotten. Between last night's mini-comeback and today's win, I walk away from the last two days with a negligible dip in the bankroll, as opposed to the wild swing it used to be. Variance is as variance does.]